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Posted by: purple hayes Apr 16 2009, 01:38 PM

I made the above image to show what was on a piece of printed music last night. I asked the piano player how she played that and she shrugged her shoulders and said she just trilled between the two notes.

So, how do you count/play that?

Posted by: steve25 Apr 16 2009, 01:42 PM

Correct me if i'm wrong but that's like a tied note, so play the note and rest for a sixteenth

Posted by: Red Apr 16 2009, 01:51 PM

A dot in front of the note means that you make it last by the length It's supposed to last + half the length It's supposed to last.

Like if you would put a dot in front of an
whole tone it would be one whole + one half

an half tone with a dot would be one half + one fourth

I know I'm bad at explaining but did you get it?

And it's not a tied note.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Apr 16 2009, 02:04 PM

I have never saw anything similar before I must confess

The half doted note can be measured as half+quarter, but those signs above tell me it's two connected 32nd notes... I don't know why the heads of the notes are empty tho..

Posted by: lcsdds Apr 16 2009, 02:08 PM

That looks like a typo to me.....I don't have any idea how to count that. Where's Pedja when you need him.....PEDJA.....WAKE UP!!!!!

Posted by: Artemus Apr 16 2009, 02:15 PM

I'm going to say that's a bit of a misprint. Firstly demisemiquavers are "filled" not open, like a minim.
I think that it's supposed to be a tremolo between G and D for the length of a dotted minim (3 beats) so in fact your piano player is playing it correctly. A tremolo like that should be illustrated with the lines between the two notes but not joined to the notes. The other reason I think it is a misprint is that with the quaver triplet at the end, that leaves 3 beats in the bar left. The dotted minim has been used twice when it should be two dotted crotchets. This is what I'd play anyhow.

Posted by: Red Apr 16 2009, 02:17 PM

Sorry i didn't notice that it was half notes But maybe it is some sort of trill, it makes sense if it is

Posted by: AlexLion Apr 16 2009, 02:18 PM

Maybe try somehow to create this in guitar pro, put tempo extremely slow and also put metronome, but i think it`s some kind of error with non filled notes I see this first time also.. Need Pedja here

Posted by: Artemus Apr 16 2009, 02:18 PM

From wikipedia, this is how a tremolo of this kind is illustrated:


And here's an example of the technique played on the piano

Posted by: Red Apr 16 2009, 02:19 PM

Tremolo and Trill is not the same thing, Trill is hammer on and pull of repeated on 2 notes

Posted by: Artemus Apr 16 2009, 02:20 PM

When did I say it was a trill?

Posted by: Marcus Lavendell Apr 16 2009, 02:21 PM

It means play G and D alternate at the speed of 32nds. But the three lines that connects the notes should not be that long (it should be a small gap on each side).


EDIT: I just saw Artemus pic, which demonstrate the correct way to notate this. Thanks Artemus

Posted by: Red Apr 16 2009, 02:23 PM

I just supposed that you thought that Trill=Tremolo.

Because no one has mentioned tremolo before you in this thread so why would you say it was tremolo otherwise?

Edit: ops, just saw that you did, sorry

Posted by: Pedja Simovic Apr 16 2009, 02:28 PM

Pedja is awake every day from 8 am to 12 in the evening


That looks like a mistake first of all. Depending on what time signature is , two dotted half notes would give you 6 quarter notes(2 beats for each half note plus 1 beat for each dot) + eight note triplet that equals = 7 beats total.

So unless time signature is 7/4 and this is full bar you copied, this piece of music is not valid.



Another thing for future reference when you encounter hard rhythm groupings...

Right now I am doing in style collaboration on Time feel.
What that should teach is basically how to count up or down from some rhythm value.

For example, if you start on quarter note, faster value is 8th note, 16th note, 32nd note, 64th etc. Slower rhythms are half note and whole note. You can of course add dots to all these values and they would still be faster or slower from quarter notes.

So here is what you do now.

You have 32nd dotted and don't know how to play it. By definition EIGHT 32nds fall under 1 beat. In this example we have TWO plus two dots which give us ONE more 32nd. Thats 3 out of 8 32nds. The rest is incomplete bar , but for purpose of figuring out this rhythm lets continue.

Turn doted 32nds into 16ths ! Thats now called HALF TIME FEEL. Now turn 16ths into 8ths! Thats called DOUBLE HALF TIME FEEL. And of course you can keep going like this over and over until you reach desired tempo where you can crack the code of this rhythm and play it properly.




On the side note this example is incomplete as it has 4/4 time signature and that bar is incomplete, and placement of rhythm values is incorrect as Beams are not FULL but rather EMPTY which contradicts the way rhythm values are written.

I hope that helps !

Posted by: Artemus Apr 16 2009, 02:33 PM

I've been reading music since I was 5, so when I see typos I can usually guess what the intention was or what should be played. My ex-piano teacher was a professional proof reader for a few music publishers so I learned a fair amount from him too. Also, when a tremolo is played between two notes like this it is equivalent to a trill in terms of playing two notes after each other repeatedly in quick succession. Trills are usually a bit more regulated though whereas a tremolo can be played more rubato

Posted by: Marcus Lavendell Apr 16 2009, 02:39 PM

Yes, it's a mistake because there's no gap on each side of the three lines. But this notation is 4/4 and that's what it shows, so that part is correct.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Apr 16 2009, 11:17 PM

I guess people mark the scores a bit differently, sometimes the signs will get copied with tiny errors like this, for example not making a gap between the triplet lines and note bodies.