Triplets in lines (eighth- and sixteenth-note)

A student slipped a triplet into a class phrase and Barry loved it: that little triplet made the phrase beautiful. Practise triplets, he told everyone, and you will be very different from other musicians. He joked that if you counted the triplets many star players use, he would hardly owe you any money.

Feeling the ‘and’20:5721:33

Asked why he stressed the sixteenth-note triplet, Barry said the patterns people learn now don’t include triplets. Horn players have good facility, but the drag is that they all sound the same.

Artists House Master Class Barry Harris - Student Interviews After Concert11:1411:48

Learn to put triplets into a phrase, including at its top. Barry told the class, the pianist included, to learn to put the triplets in, and later pointed out another place for the triplet, at the top of the phrase, and had them play the whole phrase that way.

Feeling the ‘and’21:3326:50

Barry said he mostly likes to start an eighth-note triplet on the ‘and’ of four: take that eighth note and tie it over to the first note of the triplet. He counted it off and demonstrated it, and stressed that the class has to feel those off-beat ‘ands’.

Feeling the ‘and’16:06

Jazz is played in eighth notes, not quarter notes. When horn players run a scale exercise, play it in eighths against the count; when Barry’s band switched from quarters to eighths, it sounded better right away.

Practising the blues with the horns, part 10:37

Barry complained that players all over the world only play eighth notes. Many cannot play eighth-note triplets or even quarter-note triplets, and most young players, he said, could not even imagine a sixteenth-note triplet because they don’t think rhythmically. A line can’t be just eighth notes: it has to include triplets.

Believe: a talk to musicians1:44Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York12:2412:56

Barry used to keep after Freddie Hubbard to play some triplets, and even called him ‘Trip’ to make him do it.

Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York12:24

Practise sixteenth-note triplets. In a master class Barry told the two tenor players to always practise them. Later in the same class he pointed out to two players that neither had played one while soloing; he called it the most beautiful triplet of all, and said learning everything you can about improvising means knowing how to use these triplets.

Student performances and coaching12:1725:35

Listening to a student play Giant Steps, Barry asked for it to be melodic and said he wanted to hear some triplets stuck in there somewhere, not just a stream of eighth notes.

Giant Steps in the piano class8:5910:2011:20

To show how natural triplets are, Barry pointed out that everyday English questions, like asking where someone has been or what they did, fall into groups of three. Even the opening words of a ballad title can make a triplet. Hearing the triplet in speech helps you phrase in triplets when you play.

Student performances and coaching15:5716:29