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3.1.10 Tuplets

Tuplets are made out of a music expression by multiplying all durations with a fraction

     \times fraction musicexpr

The duration of musicexpr will be multiplied by the fraction. The fraction's denominator will be printed over the notes, optionally with a bracket. The most common tuplet is the triplet in which 3 notes have the length of 2, so the notes are 2/3 of their written length

     g'4 \times 2/3 {c'4 c' c'} d'4 d'4

[image of music]

The property tupletSpannerDuration specifies how long each bracket should last. With this, you can make lots of tuplets while typing \times only once, saving lots of typing. In the next example, there are two triplets shown, while \times was only used once

     \set tupletSpannerDuration = #(ly:make-moment 1 4)
     \times 2/3 { c'8 c c c c c }

[image of music]

The format of the number is determined by the property tupletNumberFormatFunction. The default prints only the denominator, but if it is set to the Scheme function fraction-tuplet-formatter, num:den will be printed instead.

Predefined commands

\tupletUp, \tupletDown, \tupletBoth.

See also

Program reference: TupletBracket, and TimeScaledMusic.

Examples: input/regression/tuplet-nest.ly.

Bugs

Nested tuplets are not formatted automatically. In this case, outer tuplet brackets should be moved manually, which is demonstrated in input/regression/tuplet-nest.ly.

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