Do musicians count the meter all the time?

Question

When I started as a beginner on the piano I just timed the notes by feeling. That is, until my teacher played back a recording of me to show me just how messed up my timings were. Since then I've always been very diligent about figuring out the formal beat counting pattern and reciting it mentally as I play. That went well for a while of course, but gradually the music got more complex, with irregular beats, ties, syncopation, different timings for left and right etc. A lot of the music I look at now have timings that are so complex I have a hard time reciting them, even mentally. Is there even a way to count thirty-seconds?

What do the pros do? Should I continue mentally singing the timings even if it seems to make things more difficult? Is counting the beats an absolutely necessary step in learning a new piece? Or is it just for beginners to use until they've internalized the timings?

Or do you use some kind of mixed approach where you count the slow beats and leave the faster and off-beat ones to "feel"?

Answer 1

Counting is an absolutely necessary step when learning a new piece.It is the rhythmic framework of any piece. Without it, you may well be playing a different tune. 'All the right notes, but not in the right timing'.

You ask 'do they count all the time?' Well there's no need once a piece is well known to the player. We sound out words as kids, but eventually we learn to recognise the shapes of bigger words, and reading dots is similar. The rhythm pattern of a set of dots becomes known, not in every case, but patterns emerge and are remembered. We don't count the dots on a die - we recognise their pattern.

Playing with pros, looking at a new tune, often I'll hear 'Heads down and count like Hell !' muttered. Makes good sense. After all, how else is a tune going to be played successfully first time if the rhythm is ragged?

Yes, there are tricky rhythmic patterns that have to be played, and it depends how good at playing/reading someone is, but a basic, simple answer to your question is a resounding OF COURSE !! But - the header question is different - there's no need to do that once you're inside the piece. An internal clock takes over (or should !) Either foot tapping, head nodding, shoulder shrugging, whatever, it ought to be making the player into a human metronome. Some can stay still, and do it mentally, but most good players will have some form of keeping time bodily.

Answer 2

As you beginner, I strongly suggest you keep doing that. What I did when I first begun, was to count everything with my foot. After a while, I didn't really need to count every single thing with the foot, because I could hear/feel it in me.

So, no, I don't think pro musicians count every little thing, but they can if you ask them to.

Is counting the beats an absolutely necessary step in learning a new piece?

Do it; it won't harm you in any way -- that's for sure. It will help you understand rhythms much better and it will help you with the recording someday.

Or is it just for beginners to use until they've internalized the timings?

As you progress in your playing, you'll see that you won't need to be so thorought about this, and it will come naturally to you without much (or any) thinking.

Or do you use some kind of mixed approach where you count the slow beats and leave the faster and off-beat ones to "feel"?

That can work as well, but I (personally) never feel 100% sure for something that I cannot count and work just by feel. I have worked just with my feel, but better to be safe than sorry, I always try to count the things I play.

Is there even a way to count thirty-seconds?

Yes. Similar to the way you would count eighths or something. In the eighths you counr 1-2 on each beat, on sixteenths 1-2-3-4 on every beat and on thirty-seconds you count 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 on every beat.

In order to get used to that you have to be really good with sixteenths.

Answer 3

This is much like: when you drive a car, do you think about the steering all the time?

When you learn to drive, you will be consciously thinking about your steering. Similarly, an experienced driver on an unfamiliar road will be consciously thinking about it. An experienced driver on a familiar road will probably not be consciously considering their steering — but this is only because they know it well enough that some part of their subconscious is thinking about it without conscious control.

It’s the same with the meter in music. You don’t need to be always consciously counting. But if you aren’t, it should be because you are so familiar with the territory that a little part of your brain is counting in the background all the time.

Answer 4

If you have trouble with counting meter, you might want to try a rhythm solfege method like Takadimi or the Kodaly Method.

I played with an Indian tabla player for a couple of years and found tabla rhthym solfege to be superior to the Western "1-e-and-a" counting for me in performance, possibly because I block on numbers (can't remember phone numbers) but am very verbal.

You might want try one of these three alternatives.

For complex meters, I break them up into groups of twos with the syllables "Taki" and groups of threes with the syllables "Takita". For some reason, it's easier for me to solo over "Taki taki takita" than "12 12 123."

HTH.

Answer 5

Agreed. Counting is necessary until you have internalised the time.

Improvising in 7 is fine as long as you've spent enough time getting used to this number of beats. It would be difficult in the extreme to improvise well and be counting at the same time.

Answer 6

Pros don't count everything off, and there would be no time for it, either. One example you can't count is playing things like 4 notes against 3 notes (the "pass the goddamn butter" pattern). If you wanted to count that off, you'd need to count it as 4 notes of 3 blips length each against 3 notes of 4 blips length each, for a total of 12 blips. You can't count those.

The main problem with counting off everything is that you lose the accents of the music. When first learning a piece in a multi-person setting, it is not unusual to count off, say, 2/2 in 4 beats. When all parts and their relations have registered, then one can count in halves again. Or depending on the music, even in whole measures.

When playing fast passages and runs, the exact timing of every note is usually not as important as having the accented notes right on cue.

Most of the time, anything but really complex rhythms can be read off the score right away by musicians. Many professionals are excellent sight readers. The main skill is to develop an eye for how the notes relate to the main stresses in the music. Coming in half a beat early is something which one can manage pretty well without having to acually count half beats.

Answer 7

Practice and rehears over and over until it becomes second nature, I guess. I play guitar and when I started with music I was extremely bad in keeping rhythm, I couldn't even simply tap along with music. It was depressing. Somehow I picked it up over the years and now it is fairly acceptable. Rhythm/timing is an important part of music, wrong rhythm/timing basically changes a piece of music into something different that doesn't sound right, even if the notes/chords are OK. As you learn to play music you also learn to listen imho, very important.

I wish I could play classical music on the piano but I simply don't have the skills to 'copy-paste' a composition. I cannot play real time from notation either.

Answer 8

As a classically trained keyboardist composing songs for soul/funk bands, I am most often am using a 4-4 meter with even numbers of measures leading to changes in parts. Defining the 1, has been a particularly difficult problem to solve for other band members who just feel the groove of the tune differently and are not proficient sight readers. They are feeling a different song completely and it frustrates the living hell out of me. When I want to go to the change, they are not ready or want to change early. All I want is for them to feel the 1 as it has been composed, NOT "redefine the 1" in a way that makes they way they initially felt the groove "feel right" . It shouldn't be that hard for any trained musician to redefine the groove by counting. When they do, then there is a moment of enlightenment where they say "WOW!, I was totally feeling it differently! But NOW I get it!" Working with an untrained musician who does not understand the importance of counting and refuses to define the 1 as composed, is like beating your head against a brick wall.

So, YES! Count until you unequivocally know where the 1 is! If somebody is saying "You aren't feeling the 1", YOU AREN'T. END OF STORY. So, learn to read music, charts or sheet music if you cannot, whatever helps you understand where that 1 lies. If this is a problem you face, you will not progress until it is solved. And you will drive a lot of other musicians completely crazy. Once you are feeling the 1, (and with a ton of practice) the counting part will just become second nature. But ALWAYS count learning a new piece. PLEASE. Having friends as band mates might put up with this kind of problem. Any large orchestrator, recording studio producer, or performing professional, WILL NOT.

Answer 9

Mixed. If you 'just feel' the beat, you're lucky. But it's also worth checking with a metronome occasionally - bad habits are easy to acquire! As experience grows, our repertoire of patterns grows. We read and play in the same way as a fluent reader reads a book - scanning phrases and sentences rather than spelling out 'c-a-t'. But even then, sometimes it's good to go back to the detail. Also, modern composers delight in challanging us with new, complex rhythms. It's very common to see a part (even in professional circles) with pencilled slashes indicating where the beats come.

It can be amusing to be part of an ensemble or orchestra when, at a certain tricky moment EVERYONE starts tapping their feet!