The image comes about from how it's only possible to make a few notes with a triangle, meaning it's hard to be noticeably good at it, it doesn't have much of a noise besides metallic dinging and it's also not much to look at. As it doesn't have many moving parts or expensive skins to maintain, it is also a popular instrument to trust children with, giving it the image of a child's toy and nothing more. It's entirely possible to play precise notes and make it sound good with practice, but the stigma lingers.
In Real Life, professional symphony orchestras and military concert bands have percussionists who spend years of post-secondary study mastering the precise, rhythmic playing of percussion instruments such as the triangle (along with a range of other struck instruments). Percussionists have to count carefully and play with confidence.
This is often the Signature Instrument of the Butt-Monkey, The Chew Toy or The Ditz. For tropes regarding other instruments portrayed negatively, see Nobody Loves the Bassist and Dumb and Drummer.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
- Parodied in this
GEICO commercial featuring an over-the-top triangle solo.
- For the Otter Pops, specifically through the "Otter Popstars" era of the brand, Alexander the Grape was assigned the triangle as his instrument in the band. During the "Save the Day" music video, he is constantly prevented from playing a single note through the entire song. He gets the last laugh, and the last note, at the end, though.
Anime & Manga
- Doraemon: In The Doraemons Special, the eponymous group wants to perform in a band, but Doraemon is a Dreadful Musician and keeps on ruining the whole group's performance. Not wanting to leave him out, his friends end up giving him a triangle so that he can play alongside them without making too much disruptive noise. Although this backfires at the end when, at the day of the performance, the whole group aside from Doraemon are too tired to perform, leaving the triangle as the sole instrument.
Comic Books
- The Hoffnung Symphony Orchestra shows a triangle part that seems to consist entirely of rest periods. Its bored player has dozed off and is dreaming of counting not bars of rest but imaginary sheep jumping through a triangle.
Film- Live-Action
- In The Muppet Christmas Carol, during the Christmas Past scene in Fozziwig's party, a shot shows Animal at his drum set looking utterly dismayed at having to ding a little triangle in accompaniment with the more refined music. He can't hold it off for too long and breaks into a drum solo that gets the party much more raucous.
Literature
- Yang The Youngest And His Terrible Ear features the titular character struggling to play the violin despite his family's history of being good at music. He especially fears being reassigned to triangle.
Live-Action TV
- The opening sequence of Blackadder Goes Forth featured the regular cast as part of a military parade. At the end of the sequence, after the band has finished playing, we see a scruffy-looking Private Baldrick briefly making a jangling noise on a triangle.
- When Frasier is tasked to write a theme song for his radio show, he promises Roz that there will be a part for her guitar-playing boyfriend. Eventually, he creates an over-the top song requiring a choir, a full backing orchestra and Niles doing a spoken-word part in the recording booth, but he forgets about the guitar-playing dude. He does get included in the recording after being given a triangle... and thinking it looks complicated.
- In one episode Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Cookie, being a tech guy, thought that for music class he could simply play his computer. The teacher told him he must use a real instrument. He tried with the recorder, but was horrible at it, then with a drum but it was too heavy for him, (and ended smashing his teacher with it). At the end, as he couldn't play any other instrument, he was given a triangle, which he thought was perfect.
- In Season 3 of Sabrina the Teenage Witch Sabrina uses a magical penny to dissuade Valerie from becoming a second string cheerleader. When she backs out of tryouts, Valerie signs up for Orchestra Club instead.
- Sabrina: Trust me Val, Orchestra Club is the way to go.Valerie: Yeah, that's where my kind belongs, in the dark corner of the orchestra pit playing the triangle.
- Saturday Night Live
- Kristen Wiig created the character Triangle Sally. In her best-known appearance, she appeared in a skit for "The Worst of Soul Train," with the song "I Have a Triangle." The host reveals Triangle Sally died after that performance "and we did not edit it out."
- In the "Waking Up with Kimye" skit Kanye West (portrayed by Jay Pharoah) starts out by presenting the Kardashian family, "all playing musical instruments matched to their abilities! We got Khloé on triangle (plink!), Kourtney on triangle (plink!), Kendall on a box of rice, Rob on a Simon, Kris Jenner will be clapping on her own hands," and finally:
Kanye: And also on triangles, several other satellite Kardashians that I decided to meet at Thanksgiving!
- The “Holiday Pageant” sketch from 2012 pairs Martin Short with Paul McCartney as Caleb and Monty, who are auditioning together with an original song for a community center’s Christmas pageant. Caleb is the singer while Monty is an idiot who wants to sing but is only supposed to play the triangle because according to Caleb, Monty can’t sing (“I have the million dollar voice and you are a lump!” - Caleb). The first time they perform the song, Monty misses his cue, and the second time, he plays too soon. Fed up, Caleb quits and tells Monty, “Good luck with your solo career!”. Monty then asks if he can sing, and the interviewer agrees, which is a segue to Paul performing “Wonderful Christmastime” on the stage previously hidden behind the sketch background.
- Played with in the famous cowbell skit with a similar one-note instrument. Blue Öyster Cult is recording "Don't Fear the Reaper", and Gene Frenkle (Will Ferrell) is playing the cowbell obnoxiously loudly. But producer Bruce Dickinson (Christopher Walken) repeatedly asks for more cowbell.
- In The Suite Life of Zack & Cody in the episode "Orchestra," when the twins are playing in an orchestra, while Cody diligently practices his violin, Zach's practice consists of striking the triangle a few times since he will only play at the very beginning and very end of the concert.
Music
- Averted by Franz Liszt in his First Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1855), which includes a scherzo-like section with a rhythmic triangle accompaniment. The composer added a footnote specifically requesting that the triangle part here not be played sloppily but with delicate precision. It didn't dissuade the infamous music critic Edouard Hanslick from putting it down as "a triangle concerto with piano accompaniment."
Radio
- A sketch in John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme plays on the simplicity of the triangle in a different way. A young man wishes to be The Apprentice to the world's greatest triangle-maker, who he ranks as above Stradivarius. His training consisted of making four triangles ("bend, and bend, and string, and..." *ting!*), each of which was supposedly better than the last until his master claimed he had outdone him, and the apprentice insisted this was due to the careful training he'd been given over the past few minutes. Then they made a hundred more and stopped for lunch.
Theatre
- Characters Welcome: Elena Skopetos's "Orchestra Conductor Is Totally Sleeping With The Triangle Player" has a conductor shrug off her orchestra's beautiful music except for the simplistic triangle solos — not because the triangle actually sounds good, but because she's banging the new triangle player Marco. She awkwardly shoehorns more triangle sounds into the arrangement at the expense of everyone else.
Video Games
- One pop-up scenario in Bitlife has you pick an instrument to learn in music class. If you select "Triangle," you'll realize how boring the triangle is.
- Averted in Déraciné. While the triangle is indeed played by the youngest child, Rozsa, she's proud to have a role in the group's performance of Scarborough Fair and no one treats her any less for it. Marie even directly compliments the sound. Rozsa's also front and center from the player's perspective during the performance, so the triangle's role in the song is more or less impossible to miss.
- Donkey Kong 64 gives the big and simple minded Chunky Kong a triangle as his instrument in the DK Crew.
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach: In order to further the joke about the character being perceived to be terrible in-universe, one of the endings depicts a Glam Rock version of Mr. Hippo playing the triangle as opposed to an instrument more fitting of an 80s rock band.
Web Original
- Discussed and actively defied by YourMovieSucks.org in his review of The Lion King (2019). Adam points out that while the triangle was present in the opening song "The Circle of Life" in the original animated film, the remake completely removes the triangle from the same song. He lists this as a point against the remake, explaining that the triangle actually adds a subtle effect to the original version that the remake sorely lacks. He even goes as far as to wonder if Hans Zimmer has a persona vendetta against triangles given how much he removed their presence in the remake's soundtrack.
Webcomics
- Last Place Comics: A man has a recurring dream in which triangles are popular.
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball:
- The titular instrument of "The Triangle" doesn't feature much but serves to underscore how the one it's assigned to, Gumball, feels inadequate and upstaged by Darwin.
- "The Fridge" has a montage of all Gumball's failures that week, one of which was when he was assigned the triangle for band practice. He fails to hit the ONLY note he had to hit.
- Averted in one episode of the 2009 version of Angelina Ballerina, where the band needed the triangle player because the triangle was important in maintaining the rhythm.
- BoJack Horseman: Inverted in "Hooray! Todd Episode!" in which Todd joins an orchestra as a triangle player, receiving rapturous applause for his extremely simple solo note, which ends the piece. He is hailed as one of the most accomplished people the orchestra has ever seen, and the orchestra gets very worried when they think he won't get there to play the note in time.
- The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley: The fact that he is a very avid triangle player is more evidence that Ed Grimley is a very weird CloudCuckoolander.
- The Cramp Twins: Wendy deliberately gives Lucien a triangle as his assigned instrument to spite him.
- In the Cro episode "Play It Again, Cro... Not!", Phil has put together a marching band that includes Mojo playing the triangle. A Running Gag in the episode consists of Mojo getting interrupted before he can play his triangle.
- The Fairly OddParents!:
- In he episode "One Man Banned", Timmy tries for the school band, and after several failed at attempts, picks up a traingle, but when even this causes disasters to occur, he's banned from the band. To show people he has talent, he wishes that he would be famous for his triangle playing and adopts the persona "Timmy Triangle," and when he tries to play a concert without the magic of Cosmo and Wanda, he fails miserably.
- Cosmo himself used to play the "electric triangle" in his high school garage band. It did nothing but result in electric shocks to him.
- The Simpsons: When the whole school band minus three end up playing tardy by getting unnecessary surgery, Martin with his triangle only looks good in comparison to Ralph with a flute up his nose.
