The reading courseLesson 10 of 13 · Level 5
Inversions, syncopation and triplets
Read triads turned round, notes that start off the beat and hold across it, and triplets.
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A triad and its two inversions, the 4th ringed in each, and triplets across a beat.
Move a triad's lowest note up an octave and you have an inversion: the same three notes in another order, C E G becoming E G C, then G C E. The stack is no longer all lines or all spaces: two of its notes are a 4th apart. The upper note of that 4th is the chord's root, the note that names it.
A syncopation is a note that starts between the beats and holds across the next one, so the beat falls inside it. Keep counting through it and don't let the long note pull you: the next beat still comes on time.
A triplet is three notes in the time of two, written with a small 3 over them. Three eighth-note triplets fill one beat: count 1 and a, evenly, with no lean on any of the three.
The guides that go further: How to read rhythm: note values, rests, dots and ties and How to read chords: triads, inversions and sevenths.
Pieces this lesson opens
Pieces in the library that read as ready once you know everything up to this lesson, and didn't before it.
- Legato and Staccato Study, Op. 335Carl Czernylevel 5
- Prelude in C, Op. 28 No. 1Frédéric Chopinlevel 6
- October: Autumn Song, Op. 37a No. 10Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovskylevel 5