Note offset by triplet (tuplet) - Possible?

• Aug 24, 2018 - 18:37

I want the following:
4 8th-triplets followed by 4 16ths followed by 2 8th-triplets.

|o...o...o...|o...o..o..o.|.o..o...o...|
1st quarter 2nd quarter 3rd quarter

Can this be done?

All I found was this https://musescore.org/en/node/260646, but it
won't let me "split tuplets" :(


Comments

See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/tuplets.

Keep in mind that when you create a tuplet you press the total duration of the tuplet then start entering notes unless you are changing durations of notes within the tuplet. So for your example press

n 5 ctrl+3 A A A, 3 A A A A 5 ctrl+3 A A A

where
n puts you in note entry mode
5 tells MuseScore you need the length of a quarter note
ctrl+3 tells MuseScore to split that quarter note into a triplet (note the 8th note is selected automatically in the note input toolbar).
A is any note
followed by 4 16th notes then another triplet.

In reply to by Fritzkefit

What you are asking for is nonsense in music. I want to be polite, so I'll admit you may not be explaining it well if English is not your first language. First of all 4 eighth notes is not a triplet but two quarter notes or in some instances a quadruplet. If you want 4 eighth notes in the time of a quarter note use 16th notes, anything else would be confusing. If you really want to force MuseScore to display 4 eight notes in the space of a quarter note you could use Notes->Tuplets->Other and set the ration to 4/2, but as I said, this is confusing because it's played exactly like 4 16th notes. A triplet of two eighth notes likewise does not exist. Two eighth notes is the definition of a quarter note and requires no special process to make it display correctly.

If this isn't helpful, then you need to append a picture of what you are trying to achieve. Reply to this post and click the Choose a file button that will appear.

In reply to by mike320

No Worries ;)

You're right: what you are describing would not make much sense,
however, it's still not want I'm trying to notate.

Hopefully the attached file will make it clearer.

It's 3 triplets over the first quarter, one 8th-triplet at the
second quarter followed by 4 16th-notes which cover 2/3 of the
second quarter and the first 1/3 of the third quarter, and then
again two triplets to make it 3 quarters in total.

Attachment Size
musescore_forum.jpg 10.35 KB

In reply to by Fritzkefit

Your picture doesn't show the last two triplets, but I think I get it based on that description.

Kind of an odd thing, but depending on how exactly you want it to appear and whether you care more about notation or playback, you can get the job done.. You're basically creating a tuplet that spans beats two and three, for a total of two beats. So, start by selecting the half note duration. You can then do Ctrl+6 to divide this into eighths. Now enter your first eighth and the last two eighths. You'll see there are three eighths left, that's a dotted quarter. So enter that, then do Notes / Tuplets / Other and give a ration of 4:6 to divide it up into the sixteenths. That's the "proper" notation of this - a nested tuplet. It will playback correctly, and has at least a good a chance of being read correctly as well, although almost certainly not on the first try, or even second, third, or twentieth :-)

You can then fudge the notation however you like (eg, make all that invisible, then enter something else into another voice). So if you prefer it to look like an incomplete triplet followed by four sixteenths outside the bracket, you could make it look that way. I think this is much less likely to be read properly, though; I'd probably stick with the more "correct" notation I described.

In reply to by Fritzkefit

This sounds sort of like what you are describing:

nested triplets.png

Nested tuplets work the same a normal tuplets. The only different thing to consider is that if you are making a tuplet inside of a tuplet, you need to use the duration the triplet is replacing. The quadruplet 16th notes are actually not necessary since the are the same as a quarter note inside of the triplet. The final duplet in the picture has a duration of a dotted 1/4 note.

I don't think this is quite right, but I hope it lets you know how to nest the tuplets to get what you want. As Marc said, this is very confusing to a musician.

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