Hi all,
Thanks for the feedback. To clarify the point on triplets, the request from @jackscores01 and others refers to true triplet rhythms that come from subdividing beat rhythms into three equal parts, where this division is not otherwise natural to the meter. It’s true that in “compound meters” like 6/8, 9/8 or 12/8 (in Hookpad, 6, 9, or 12 beat meters), the primary beats are naturally divided into three beats each, meaning that music in these meters will naturally have a “triplet feel.” It’s also true that a lot of rhythms in popular music that seem to have a triplet feel are actually just a swing 8ths feel, which is also supported in Hookpad. That being said, there is no way currently to mix triplet and non-triplet rhythms in the same measure, like this:
When we first created Hookpad and Theorytab many years ago, and it was still in a development phase, we did allow these rhythms to exist. However two undesirable things happened:
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Mixing triplet and non-triplet rhythms in undisciplined ways was causing notes to have all sorts of nonsense timings and durations that ran counter to the spirit of Hookpad, which was designed to guide users to create sensible music.
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Triplet rhythms simply were not required to analyze the vast majority of popular music in Theorytab (classical music is a different story). The only song out of the first 300 or so that we analyzed that maybe could have used triplets was the Jessica Simpson version of “Part of your world” from The Little Mermaid. Obviously there are exceptions, but we very rarely hear examples of real songs that require true triplet rhythms (that aren’t simply swing timings or compound meter).
Since that time, Hookpad has evolved in many other ways where I had some initial hesitation. Triplet rhythms are a pretty core part of music, and it’s a completely fair point that many of you have expressed wanting to use these rhythms in Hookpad.
The key will be introducing the feature in a way that allows users who want to create more complex rhythms to do so, without compromising the simplicity of Hookpad for those don’t need the feature. What we’ll probably do is to create some simple rules about how you can interact with triplet groups to discourage accidentally creating nonsensical rhythms.
In summary, we’ll make it happen shortly. Thanks for your understanding and patience.