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Tuplets are made from a music expression by multiplying all the durations with a fraction:
\times fraction { music }
The duration of music will be multiplied by the fraction. The fraction's denominator will be printed over or under the notes, optionally with a bracket. The most common tuplet is the triplet in which 3 notes have the duration of 2, so the notes are 2/3 of their written length.
a2 \times 2/3 { b4 b b } c4 c \times 2/3 { b4 a g }
The automatic placement of the tuplet bracket above or below the notes may be overridden manually with predefined commands, for details see Direction and placement.
Tuplets may be nested:
\autoBeamOff c4 \times 4/5 { f8 e f \times 2/3 { e[ f g] } } f4 |
Modifying nested tuplets which begin at the same musical moment
must be done with \tweak
.
To modify the duration of notes without printing a tuplet bracket, see Scaling durations.
\tupletUp
,
\tupletDown
,
\tupletNeutral
.
Entering several tuplets using only one \times command
The property tupletSpannerDuration
sets how long each of the
tuplets contained within the brackets after \times
should last.
Many consecutive tuplets can then be placed within a single
\times
expression, thus saving typing.
In the example, two triplets are shown, while \times
was
entered only once.
For more information about make-moment
, see "Time
administration".
\relative c' { \time 2/4 \set tupletSpannerDuration = #(ly:make-moment 1 4) \times 2/3 { c8 c c c c c } }
Changing the tuplet number
By default, only the numerator of the tuplet number is printed over the
tuplet bracket, i.e., the denominator of the argument to the
\times
command. Alternatively, num:den of the tuplet number may
be printed, or the tuplet number may be suppressed altogether.
\relative c'' { \times 2/3 { c8 c c } \times 2/3 { c8 c c } \override TupletNumber #'text = #tuplet-number::calc-fraction-text \times 2/3 { c8 c c } \override TupletNumber #'stencil = ##f \times 2/3 { c8 c c } }
Permitting line breaks within beamed tuplets
This artificial example shows how both manual and automatic line breaks may be permitted to within a beamed tuplet. Note that such off-beat tuplets have to be beamed manually.
\layout { \context { \Voice % Permit line breaks within tuplets \remove "Forbid_line_break_engraver" % Allow beams to be broken at line breaks \override Beam #'breakable = ##t } } \relative c'' { a8 \repeat unfold 8 { \times 2/3 { c[ b a] } } % Insert a manual line break within a tuplet \times 2/3 { c[ b \bar "" \break a] } \repeat unfold 2 { \times 2/3 { c[ b a] } } c8 }
Music Glossary: triplet, tuplet, polymetric.
Learning Manual: Tweaking methods.
Notation Reference: Time administration, Scaling durations, The tweak command, Polymetric notation.
Snippets: Rhythms.
Internals Reference: TupletBracket, TupletNumber, TimeScaledMusic.
When the first note on a staff is a grace note followed by a
tuplet the grace note must be placed before the \times
command to avoid errors. Anywhere else, grace notes may be
placed within tuplet brackets.
This page is for LilyPond-2.11.58 (development-branch).
Report errors to http://post.gmane.org/post.php?group=gmane.comp.gnu.lilypond.bugs.
Your suggestions for the documentation are welcome.