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Three beats to the bar.
Printed above the staff (In three, in 3) to set a three-beat pattern, either grouping a compound bar (9/8 in three dotted beats) or restoring three after a passage beaten in one; it holds until another beat instruction or tempo change.
Abbreviations: in 3
Use it where the time signature allows more than one reading — 9/8 in three or in nine, 3/4 in three or in one — and the choice affects phrasing and ensemble. It is a practical instruction for conductor and players, and it also tells them how you hear the bar grouped.
In three is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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