Irish Triplets

The Timing of Triplets in Traditional Irish Music

By Jonathan Lay, July 8, 2025

In Irish traditional (trad) music, triplets are often used as embellishments, and sometimes they are included as a standard part of a tune. But a triplet in Irish trad is played differently than a triplet in other Western music. And there is a more accurate way to transcribe triplets as they are played in Irish trad.

Three Notes in the Space of Two

The general meaning of a musical triplet is that three notes are played in the time normally allotted to two notes. In sheet music notation, a triplet is shown as a group of notes with the numeral “3” above or below it.

All of that is true for Irish traditional music. But here’s the difference: in most Western music, all three of the notes in a triplet are given equal time durations. In Irish trad, however, the first two notes are played with a shorter duration than the third note. Essentially, each of the first two notes in the triplet has half the duration of the third note.

For example, in an Irish trad tune, when a pair of eighth notes (quavers) is replaced by a triplet, the triplet is transcribed as a group of three eighth notes with a “3” label. But it is played as a pair of sixteenth notes (semiquavers) followed by an eighth note. The figure below (Figure 1) illustrates this example.

It’s Not Quite that Simple

So, for Irish trad, an eighth-note triplet (Figure 1, B) would be more accurately transcribed as two sixteenth notes followed by an eighth note (Figure 1, C). But even so, that notation is just an approximation of how the figure would be played by a skilled musician in the Irish tradition.

While a triplet in Irish trad music is usually played in place of two eighth notes (quavers), those original two notes would likely not have been played with the same duration. In a reel, the first eighth note in a pair is usually played with a slightly longer duration than the second. Similarly in a jig, the first eighth note in a group of three (making half of a measure) is usually played with a slightly longer duration than the next two eighth notes. That’s what gives those tunes “swing.” And in a hornpipe, the first of the two eighth notes would be played as a dotted eighth note, giving the hornpipe its very distinct rhythm.

Wrapping it Up

In Irish tunes, the most common triplets used as ornamentation are eighth-note triplets. The three notes of the triplet take the place (and time duration) of two eighth notes. While the triplet is usually shown as three notes of equal duration, in practice the first two notes each have about half the duration of the third note. So it would be more accurate — but still an approximation — to transcribe the eighth-note triplet as two sixteenth notes followed by an eighth note.

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