I'm mostly self-taught musically; I've had some formal training, but what I learned back in elementary school never got past 8th notes. I learned the basics of counting 16th notes (1 e & a...) when picking up drums about a year or two ago, but now I've come upon an interesting issue.
A friend has asked me to teach him bass, and I'm trying my best to avoid simply telling him to "do it by feel" and get him a proper foundation on counting. In our next lesson I've got a piece picked out that works pretty well as a basic introduction to counting patterns using whole through 8th notes, but it's got two transitional bars in a 16th note pattern that, frankly, I'm not sure how to count out properly.
The bar two bars in question look like the following (taken from the Mega Man 3 boss theme, for reference):
All notes are 16th notes, R = 16th rest G|---------------------------------------------| D|-13-13-R-14-14-R-15-15-R-14-14-R-13-14-15-R-o| A|--------------------------------------------o| E|---------------------------------------------|
As a result of my lack of training, I have a bad habit of counting notes instead of rhythm, so my instinct tends to run to counting it as either of the following:
- 12, 12, 12, 12, 123
- 11, 22, 33, 44, 123
Conversely, based on how I've since learned to count 16th notes, the following pattern is ostensibly the "correct" way to do it:
- 1 e, a 2, & a, e &, 4 e &
But that seems so ridiculously messy and complex I'm having trouble counting it right at all.
What is the right method for counting these two bars?