Disclaimer - I’m not half the player almost everyone is here - so that’s obviously a contributing factor. I just discovered the idea of playing groups of 4 with a triplet feel - ascending 3nps scale (which i can kind of do with a triplet feel) - descending - or even pentatonic patterns. This is giving me absolute fits trying to do this with a metronome. Anybody here have any pointers of wisdom or point me to a link where this is being demonstrated clearly? I’m about to smash my metronome on the floor - but it’s my phone - so I really shouldn’t do that. 
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In my experience, this is one of the few types of practice where “start slow and raise your speed slowly” is actually good advice.
Also see if you can set your metronome to actually play all three notes of each triplet? When I was BUT A WEE LAD that’s what I did to try to help make sure I was actually playing what I thought I was.
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Yes. I backed the metronome way down - and it was still driving me crazy. Trying to accent on the beat - I don’t know - just doesn’t want to happen. I can’t even find any good demo videos of this either. Yes - I have my metronome in the mode where it plays all 3 triplet clicks and accents the first. I may try again tonight- who knows.
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Maybe try literally counting the triplet beats out loud (speaking) as you play. Once you make some progress with that, make some attempts without the speaking.
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I do this all the time, and I really like it. Specifically, when learning anything mechanical, I like flipping between a threes feel and a fours feel. My hypothesis is that because the accents are in different places, then to your brain it feels like two different phrases. So basically it’s like having two chances to learn the same mechanics.
Sometimes I find the threes version easier. Sometimes I find the fours version easier. It just depends - I don’t notice any correlation between what the phrase actually looks like on the fretboard and which one I find easier. In this Mike Stern lesson, we talk about using this concept to learn three-string arpeggios. The segment starts about halfway through:
https://troygrady.com/interviews/mike-stern/chapter-5-arpeggio-mechanics/
Teemu also talks about this in his interview. Here’s an example where he plays a 3nps scale with sixteenths, i.e. a feel of four:
https://troygrady.com/interviews/teemu-mantysaari/clips/scale-3nps-sixteenths/
You can click the time marker at the bottom of the page to go to the portion of the interview where he discusses this.
Note that I don’t use a metronome for this. I’ll just tap my foot, or even do nothing - just mental. I don’t even think of this as strictly tempo related. This is just a technique I use to take a phrase I’m working on and make it feel different, as part of the trial and error aspect of learning hand motions and making them smooth. Eventually, you get to a point where the motions are completely memorized and the tempo is mostly irrelevant (to me) at that point.
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Maybe try literally counting the triplet beats out loud (speaking) as you play. Once you make some progress with that, make some attempts without the speaking.
Yeah - I had tried that - and got nowhere. I will try again at a painfully slow beat tonight. There’ s a mental hiccup - my brain wants the pattern to change on the accented note.
Thanks for the links Troy. I will watch those this week. I have tried the foot tap thing but my internal non foot tap metronome works better than my foot tap. I find that I’m adjusting the foot tap subconsciously to my playing rather than vice versa. Things I need to work on still.
I find ascending is doable - descending - not so much and single string ascending. When ascending the accented note of the triplet is the first finger - (with the exception of where you shift to 2 nps - using the G Major 3 nps as an example starting on the low G) - so it satisfies my brain’s need for consistency and symmetry - but if I try to extend that and keep ascending up the high E string - I can hold the tempo but not the triplet feel. I can’t do it at all descending.
Yes, going the other way, it was a breakthrough for me when I started to be able to perceive different halves of fours played in sextuplets. Break it down, put it back together, and everything else recommended here.
Right. Meaning, if you have trouble with this by tapping your foot or using a metronome or whatever, then don’t even try to hear it as the original pattern. Just take the line and break it up into separate licks, each of which has six notes, or four notes, or whatever the time is. And just practice those pieces separately. You can even make up little phrases or an etude with just that unit, repeating.
This way you don’t have any confusion with whatever you think the time of the original phrase should be, because it’s a whole different phrase at that point. And with the new phrase, you’re just learning a different shape with its own string changes and rhythm.
Eventually you can put it back together as the original. Or maybe you’ll discover that the new things you came up with are more interesting than the original and you won’t even bother. That’s cool.
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Indeed. Much success in music depends on a certain honesty about recognizing similar materials as clearly different in multiple contexts and as in your suggestion, at will.
Appreciate all the replies and dialogue. I’m at it again tonight to see what progress i can make. I just sat down and for giggles took a common warm up i use - Troy’s buddy Ben Eller https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra_TbQGH6wg&t=309s And tried to set that to a triplet feel accenting each triplet on the beat. My kids are hearing me swear.
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I tell my students in situations like this to count one, two , three rather than use the metronome to begin with. And accent with foot, head or whole body on the one. As slowly as your brain allows you to go think through the rhythm. Maybe as slow as 50 bpm. And work on the first two strings of the pattern or so. Just a tiny chunk, as slowly as your brain lets you think through the rhythm somewhat evenly. The repeat with new chunks, if necessary create overlapping chunks.
Sometimes it also helps writing it down in tab or notation form and put a huge red circle around the first note of each triplet, depending on how natural reading any type of music is. That is, at least if you put the accent on the one.
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