What are triolic and punctuated notes?

[beatflux]

Subject.

[cryophonik]

Hey Beatflux - I answered your question over on the TA forums before seeing it posted here, but now I think I understand why you're asking. From the "Sync" section in the Sylenth1 manual:

Triolic and punctuated values are also possible: T stands for triolic and D for punctuated note lengths.

The problem here is the use of the word "punctuated". That's a general term that, when used in the context of music, usually refers to a note that is cut short abruptly and accented, separated from adjacent notes, etc. But, as I mentioned over on the TA forums, it's not uncommon for people to refer to dotted notes as being punctuated (probably comes from seeing the dot as a form of punctuation). That's a big difference because dotted notes are actually 50% longer than the note that they are dotting (i.e., NOT played short) and, depending on the context, can be used to form a triplet pattern (e.g., consecutive dotted eighth notes). Someone can correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not at my DAW right now), but I believe that the punctuated settings in the Sylenth1 sync function actually refers to dotted values (hence the "D" indicator), rather than patterns comprised of short/abrupt notes.

[Meffy]

Triplets and dotted notes sounds right to me.

The dotted note thing might be from a German-English or Latin-English translation. Dot = point = Punkt. In Latin the dot after a note (in the old neume notation) that lengthens it by half is a punctus. "Punctuation" literally means "adding points."

So: a punctuated note is a note that's been punk'd. :-}