Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Any clues on frequent third beat notes on a metronome?

I've been trying to learn some jazzy and blues songs from piano sheet music. They have had a few sparse notes where a single beat was divided into thirds. But as they were sparse I got the hang of doing it by feel and relying on my meronome for a steady fixed beat.

I am assuming everyone knows what I am talking about, but I mean this kind of note

I am using this metronome app on my ipad. https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/pro-metronome-beat-sound-light/id477960671?mt=8

However I now want to learn a song which has so many beats divided into thirds.. I feel like the metronome would be quite incapable of handling it, except to remind me I got a bar down well.

Are there any tips to handling these beats divided into 3 with the use of a metronome? Or is it just by feel ?

I'm not sure that I do, but I think you are talking about 2 beat triplets. Ie. playing 3 notes evenly in the space of two beats. If so, I have copied below a method for doing this with a metronome that I just came across online.

I would be more inclined, as you have already suggested, to ignore it all though, shut off the metronome and feel it. But here it is if it helps ...

Instructions

1 Note the time signature for your piece of music ...

2 Set a metronome so that each beat per measure gets two counts. Beats are usually broken down into two equal beats, or intervals of two.

3 lay the first note of a triplet on the beat.

4 The second note must come slightly before the second count of the beat on your metronome.

5 The third note of a triplet is played after the second count of the beat on your metronome.

6 Practice triplets separately if you have trouble with the timing. Triplets are easy to play, but take a little practice at first.

It is much more simple then I might be conveying in my first post. Its the same as a regular beat, but where it is divded by halfes, a triplet note is divided into thirds of a whole beat.

I really need the metronome to be consistent and get the rhythm before feeling it seperately.So I can first learn the notes and then after I don't have to think about that anymore to then learn the rythm. I first did it by feel and manual counting... It wasn't pretty.

While I'm writing it I'm trying to follow the instructiobns, be slightly ahead and behind the click.. The main problem here is switching between division in halves and then triplicates. I'm not feeling it..

Mainly the song I want to learn is Big Chief from Professor Longhair from this book http://www.amazon.com/Professor-Longhair-Collection-Piano-Personality/dp/0793593344

I found this video on youtube of it being played https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab5qxrQuCMY

I guess I will have to do seperate practise runs of doing a triplet beat within a regular beat thingy..

Do you know how to count beats? More than just 1 2 3 4, but subdividing the beat? So if you had 8th notes, you'd count "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and" throughout, if you had 16th notes, you'd count "1-ee-and-ah 2-ee-and-ah 3-ee-and-ah 4-ee-and-ah", etc. So you know exactly when to play the note - on one of those spoken syllables.

So for triplets, you generally will count "1-trip-let". The example you provided is quite complex, so perhaps a bit of brushing up on the theory behind triplets before attempting the counting of that example would be a good idea.

I recommend reading this tutorial on note reading:
http://teoria.com/tutorials/reading/index.php
which addresses rhythms and counting. Don't skip ahead to the triplets section, however, because you'll need the foundation of the other rhythms first.

For the example you provided, I'd just set the metronome at the eighth note: 8 ticks per measure instead of 4. That makes it much easier to hear whether the triplets are correct.

Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick but if your task is specific to the sort of thing P. Longhair plays then I don't think you need to aim for the precision that your question seems to lead towards. This would be more about 'fitting in' notes to the space allotted to them. His triplets for the most part are ornaments, short arpeggios played as grace notes, more like a roll. That sort of thing is distinct from the bar showing in your first post where the 16th triplets are on repeats of one note or chord and, depending on the rest of the piece, probably form the rhythmic base of the segment.

Are you trying to do P. Longhair or trying to accurately play the bar showing in your opening post?

WinSchutten,

You're working from a PLH transcription. So find the original recording and listen. And listen! And emulate what you hear. Get software that let's you slow down the recording w/out changing the pitch. That can add another dimension to the learning process.

But, above all you need to hear PLH playing this. The metronome might help some. But if it comes down to listening to a metronome or to PLH the choice probably will become clear!!

Hope this helps!!

If a piece has eighth notes, and triplet 16th notes (so three 16's = one eighth note), you set the metronome to eighth note beats.

Getting the 16th-not triplets _even_ is a job for your ear, not for the metronome.

If a piece has both triplet 16th notes, and "plain" 16th notes (so three triplet 16th notes = two 16th notes), you have to master "3-against-2" playing.

My suggestion, FWIW:

. . . Do that away from the piano.

Set the metronome to about 60 bpm.

Tap you foot, clap, hit the table, use a small drum -- whatever. One hand (or foot) does two-to-a-beat, and the other does three-to-a-beat. Get each hand working separately, before combining them.

Once you can do both hands (one "in two", the other "in three"), _gradually_ speed up the metronome.


. Charles


PS -- I don't teach, and may have misunderstood the problem.

Hah, a lot of good suggestions everyone.

I know it is more about the feel from the recording, I do that too.. but I first need to get the generic rythm and notes down.

I can't do it all at once, when I learn I need to space it all out. But all the tips here should definately help me out, thank all the people who posted.

Now it is mostly a problem of putting in the time to learn it.

If anyone is reading this facing the same problem.. Now I found a solution which works for fast paced songs, where they write down triplet notes in order to fit everything in the regular beat.

Another song Im practising used gracenotes.. So I now treat the first note in a fast triplet as a gracenote and then am treating the rest in the regular divised beat.

At the slow practise speed it doesnt quite work, but if you know it enough to practice it faster, evt at full speed it will work right.