Tuplets
Six ways of dividing time, each one twice to hear: first the usual division, then the same span divided differently.
A tuplet is not a pitch and not a sign but a division of time: this many notes where others would normally stand. The bar does not get longer or shorter — it is only carved up differently.
That is hard to explain and easy to hear. So every case on this page stands twice: once in the usual division, once with the same span divided into the tuplet. Both rows last exactly as long, and both sit on the same note — leaving time as the only thing that differs.
Eighth-note triplet
3 eighths in the time of 2 — far and away the most common tuplet. It splits one beat into three instead of two and can be heard in almost every swing and blues number. In print it usually appears without a bracket: the beam already groups it, so the number alone will do.
Quarter-note triplet
3 quarters in the time of 2. The same division as the eighth-note triplet, one level up — what gets divided is not one beat but two at once. It is markedly harder to place, because the middle note falls between two beats and has nothing to hold on to.
Sixteenth-note triplet
3 sixteenths in the time of 2, which is a triplet inside a single eighth. It rarely stands alone: in runs and quick figures several follow one another, and then the whole bar sounds evenly faster without the tempo changing at all.
Duplet
2 notes in the time of 3 — the triplet in reverse. It only occurs in compound metres such as 6/8, where the beat is divided into three to begin with: there the duplet halves it for a moment. In a metre whose beat is already in two, it would have nothing to do.
Quintuplet
5 notes in the time of 4. Five can be neither halved nor thirded, and that is exactly its appeal: it lies across the pulse and only meets it again on the next beat. It is played as one gesture rather than as five counted notes.
Sextuplet
6 notes in the time of 4. Whether you hear it as two triplets or as three pairs is decided by the accents alone — and the textbooks have never quite agreed. In print the two are the same picture; which reading is meant is given away by the music around it.
How to spot a tuplet
By the number. It stands above the notes and says how many have been pressed into the span — a three over three eighths, a five over five sixteenths. If the notes are beamed, the beam already groups them and the number stands alone above; if they are not, a square bracket is drawn around them with the number in its middle.
Where the ratio is not obvious, some editions print both numbers with a colon — a seven over sixteenths in a compound metre may mean seven in the time of four or seven in the time of six. When only one number is given, what it replaces is whatever the metre divides into normally.
How long a single note becomes
The arithmetic is the same every time: take the duration the note would have without the tuplet and multiply it by the replaced number divided by its own. An eighth inside an eighth-note triplet therefore lasts two thirds of an ordinary eighth, a sixteenth inside a quintuplet four fifths.
In practice nobody works this out mid-performance. You count the tuplet as a unit of its own — one-and-a for three, one-two-three-four-five for five — and only make sure the first note sits on the beat and the next beat arrives on time. The figures above are for checking, not for playing.
Where the usual division lives
This page explains the exception. What it replaces — whole, half, quarter and eighth notes and their rests — is with the Note values. Which beat a bar has in the first place, and why the duplet only turns up in certain metres, is with the Time signatures.
Music symbols · Note values · Music notation glossary
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