{"id":265,"date":"2020-05-26T17:01:02","date_gmt":"2020-05-26T17:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/scua\/?p=265"},"modified":"2020-06-24T17:39:32","modified_gmt":"2020-06-24T17:39:32","slug":"what-in-the-world-is-a-trinome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/scua\/2020\/05\/26\/what-in-the-world-is-a-trinome\/","title":{"rendered":"What in the World is a Trinome?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Maddie Dietrich, Music Special Collections and Research Specialist<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\n\"trinome3\"<\/a>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

F. Ludwig Diehn, composer, benefactor, and the man whose name is born by ODU\u2019s Diehn School of Music, donated his personal collection of letters, scores and artifacts to ODU Special Collections and University Archives in the late 1990s. Among the items contained in the collection is a remarkable piece of apparatus known as the Billotti Trinome. It is a metronome, but it\u2019s much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A simple metronome produces a click sound at regular intervals at a rate set by the user who can then self-monitor their own sense of pulse against that of the machine. The rate of speed the clicks occur is measured in beats per minute, so a metronome can be set to, say, 72 bpm, or 120 bpm, and so on. Nowadays metronomes, like clocks, are partially or fully electronic, often relying on quartz movement for establishing regularity, but older metronomes were mechanical and operated via a simple clockwork mechanism and, like mechanical clocks, were driven by a rewindable mainspring. Later metronomes would feature a small electric motor to drive the mechanism. A slightly more complex version of the mechanical metronome included a small internal bell which could be set to ring once every two, three or four clicks as desired, on the downbeat of each grouping of beats. The Billotti Trinome took this concept a step further by adding a second, independent click pitched slightly lower than the first. Combined with the bell sound the Trinome is capable of playing three separate beats simultaneously at one tempo, effectively producing what musicians call polyrhythms<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\"trinome2\"<\/a>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Patented by Paul Billotti in the early 1960s, a product review appearing in a 1963 issue of Music Educators Journal<\/em> offers the following description. \u201cTHE BILLOTTI TRINOME, a new device billed as \u201cthe rhythm metronome,\u201d produces beats with three different sounds\u2014a bell, a tick, and a tock\u2014each sound beating a different rate of speed and combining in various ways to form rhythmical patterns which can be varied by adjusting the rate of speed of each beat sound to the desired proportion relative to the speed rate of the other two beat sounds.\u201d As a composer of 20th<\/sup> century music Diehn undoubtedly found the device useful when conceiving of multiple complex melodies and rhythms played against one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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