Kevin Jimenez for example, in 4/4 time, you have the options of 8th or 16th as quads or 8th or 16th note as triplets.

But for example, in 12/8, you only have the natural 8th and 16th triplets, but not the quad division.

Here’s a screenshot.

Kevin Jimenez I guess … part of my confusion is, how many beats are in a 12/8 timing? 12?

Justin I understand what you are asking. There’s two ways to think about it.

Twelve 8th notes in a measure. (Counted as 123 456 789 101112) there’s other ways as well.

Or four dotted Quarter Notes if you are feeling the pulse in 4. (1 2 3 4)

Because of the time signature it’s grouped in 3s. When you do 16th notes there will be 6 of them per beat.

Let me know if that makes sense.

Kevin Jimenez thanks Kevin!

I’m still letting it sink in, as I’m still fairly new to drums. I learned that compound timing is when the top number is divisible by 3.

Here’s a pic of how I was thinking about it. The top two rows are 4/4 timing, showing the first quarter note in both a quad division and a triplet division.

I then drew the 12/8 under it, while showing the natural triplet form and then the quad form. Meaning, taking the 3 notes and sub dividing them by 4. I don’t know what kind of note value you call that.

I’m not sure if what I’m labeling as eighth notes is accurate in this drawing. Like, in 4/4 it’s two boxes, but in 12/8 it’s one box.

I took some time to think about your drawing.

In 4/4 your quads are 16th notes

I personally would not be thinking about them as quads as that will confuse things in other time signatures. Think of them as 16th note division.

Your top two lines are correct.

When it comes to 12/8, it will not transfer over the way you are thinking about it. Triplets in 4/4 feel the same in 12/8 but we are thinking about them as 8th notes when it comes to counting.

Triplets in 4/4 are counted in different ways (1 trip let, 1+ah, 1 2 3) those are the most common. But once we put those 3 notes in 12/8 we count them as 123, 456, etc.

Look at my file upload. When we do quarter notes in 12/8 it comes out differently. The beat note app will not do it like this because it is programmed to show you the simplest way to write grooves for drum set notation. So it chooses the least complicated way.

Let me know if this makes sense.