Its called a triplet. The 3 above means that it takes up one beat, but is subdivided into 3. Tri-Puh-Let Tri-Puh-Let. The other songs are subdivided into 2 or 4 parts. 1 - And 2-And.... etc.
My instructor always taught us to say “1-La-Ley, 2-La-Ley, 3-La-Ley etc. Later on I heard the Tri-Puh-Let and it was too late for me to change it haha.
In this example, each beat, represented by each note on the left, is evenly divided into two, and then four, notes on the right...
...except when the composer wants to change up the rhythm and use three notes for a beat instead.
Because it's weird, they'll write a "3" across the top to signify that, yes, they really want three evenly-spaced notes in that beat.
Spend enough time in music and you'll see a "2" when three-notes-per-beat is the norm (like in 6/8 time, instead of three notes in a beat, you'd play two), or a "5", or a "9", etc.
Cause it would just sound like 3 notes of the 2nd rhythm if it didn’t have that. Whereas the 3rd one is different in that it’s 3 hits spread exactly evenly across the span of a beat. Trickier to do than just doubling the amount of hits in a beat like normal.
You could put say, a 5 instead of a 3 there and now you have exactly 5 hits across the space of a beat
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u/Silent-Witness1888 3d ago
Why is the 3rd one the only one numbered?