LESSON THIRTEEN

The Triplet

A triplet is a group of three evenly spaced notes played within one beat. Eighth note triplets are indicated by three eighth notes grouped together by a bracket (or a curved line) and the numeral 3.

The eighth note triplets are played with one third of a beat each. Triplets are easy to understand once you have heard them played.

This 12 Bar Blues solo makes frequent use of triplets. As you play, try to keep the triplet rhythm in your mind even when you are playing the quarter notes and half notes. This will help you keep time.

There are many songs in Blues and Jazz which use the triplet as the basic rhythmic unit, so the more comfortable you are with triplets, the easier it will be to play these styles. Notice the first and second endings in this example. These endings are described in detail further in this lesson.

Swing Rhythm

A swing rhythm can be created by tying together the first and second notes of a triplet. There are several different ways of writing swing rhythms. To understand them it is worth using one musical example written in various ways. First play example 70 which contains eighth note triplets.

Example 71 has the first and second notes of the triplet group tied. This gives the it a swing feel.

The two eighth note triplets tied together in example 71 can be replaced by a quarter note.

To simplify notation, it is common to replace the 6 with z, and to write at the start of the piece 6 = z as illustrated in example 73.

Examples 72, 73, and 74 sound exactly the same but are just written differently.

First And Second Endings

The next song contains first and second endings. The first time you play through the song, play the first ending, (Z ), then go back to the beginning. The second time you play through the song, play the second ending (X ) instead of the first.

St James Infirmary

This traditional song was made famous by Louis Armstrong and has been played by many of the great Jazz players.