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I’m finding it really hard to play these triplets. Also any tips on how to overall count these bars as I’m struggling to count it as a lot of the rhythm doesn’t fall on the beat and I get confused. It is hit the road jack by Ray Charles if that is any help

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    Find a better version. I can't even figure out if whoever wrote this did it by opening a MIDI in a notation program, or is simply musically inept.
    – MattPutnam
    Commented Oct 17, 2018 at 17:18

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Oh, goodness. Please, for your own sake, find another version of this. No musician should ever have to play from something like this. It's likely this score wasn't created by a human (or at the very least, not a musician). Find another score ASAP; you're only wasting your time by trying to read this score.

As a sample of some of the notational atrocities in this example:

Measure 29 (the first measure of the second system) is best notated as:

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In the next measure, there's no reason for there to be 3 sixteenth-note rests hidden under a triplet. Let's just make it:

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In measure 33, the syncopation does a terrible job of showing you where every beat lies. Better would be:

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(An alternative to the above, as Carl states in the comments, is to have the third beat a sixteenth followed by a dotted-eighth note. Both versions are common.)

And don't even get me started on measure 27. Why not just have the following?

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As for your question of the triplets against an eighth-note left hand, try practicing this 3:2 rhythm with something like this:

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Then add a tie to each E so that you don't rearticulate them:

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Now just remove a few Ds and Cs:

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And voilà! You're playing this rhythm; now just adjust it to match the pitches in your example.

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  • Thanks so much!! I thought I was just awful at reading rhythm and that this version was fine
    – Gabriela
    Commented Oct 17, 2018 at 17:39
  • Well done -- I might prefer the Measure 33 third beat to be a sixteenth followed with a dotted eighth rather than the tie you wrote.
    – Carl Witthoft
    Commented Oct 18, 2018 at 13:54
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    @CarlWitthoft Good point. The fact that I debated which one to choose suggests that both are very common. I'll edit that in, thanks!
    – Richard
    Commented Oct 18, 2018 at 13:56

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