Fundamentals of Rhythm

Triplets

Lawrence and Bill demonstrated how time can be cut up into smaller and smaller pieces to create different rhythms. They took a whole note and cut it in half to create two half notes. They cut a half note in half to create two quarter notes and so on. But, cutting time in half is only half of the story! 

Musicians can also split time up into thirds instead of halves. If we take a piece of time and cut it up into three sections, we create a different set of rhythmic possibilities that you can’t get to if you’re only dividing by two. Rhythms created from divisions of three are called triplets. 

We already established that if you take a whole note and cut it in two, you create two half notes. If you take that same whole note and cut it up into three sections instead of two, you create what are called half note triplets. A half note cut into three creates quarter note triplets and so on.