Notation & reading
Tuplet
A tuplet is a group of notes played in the time normally occupied by a different number of them, written with a bracket and a numeral, most commonly a triplet, three notes in the space of two.
The numeral says how many notes are in the group; the surrounding rhythm says how much time they share. A triplet of eighth notes fills one quarter-note beat that would ordinarily hold two eighths, so each note is two-thirds of its written value.
Duplets and quadruplets do the reverse, fitting two or four notes into a space normally divided into three, which is why they appear mostly in compound metres like 6/8.
The reliable way to learn an unfamiliar tuplet is to say it rather than count it: a spoken word of the right number of syllables, repeated in time, gets the proportion into the body faster than subdividing arithmetic does.
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