Counting in Music: You can count on it.
One of the strangest phenomena I've run across in my years of teaching, is students' unwillingness to count. Not so much for students of pop music, where they can “feel” rhythms and beats, but rather, for students of Classical music and of piano where they see rhythms and beats.
For classical musicians, it’s essential that one counts. Classical musicians are handed printed music, not recordings after all, and the only way to decipher rhythms on the page is by counting. The same goes for piano students studying from a book. In the book is “written” notation. It’s essential that you not only recognize the note names, but where those notes are placed on the rhythmic time grid.
As a reader, you must know where beat one is. And only if you know where beat one is, can you know where beats 2, 3 and 4 are. You could compare it to a calendar where days, months and years are systematically marked off with the passing of time. You need to know where January is, and where Monday is, etc. If you don’t know, there’s no order, and as I’ve said for decades, “The human mind craves order.”
I've noticed that part of the unwillingness to count comes from self consciousness; the student feels silly counting out loud. They feel like they’re being asked to do something that they would have done in first grade.
The student also feels uncomfortable hearing the sound of their voice in the room. Really. It’s not uncommon to ask a student to count out loud — so I can tell if they’re counting correctly, as opposed to me counting for them — and have them burst into a fit of giggles and blushes. I then have to explain what’s happening to them, so I simply insist that “we just get it over with” and count out loud, assuring them that the so-called pain that they’re feeling will disappear in a few minutes when their critical mind gets bored with criticizing.
The critical mind is like a bully. The bully loves to see you squirm and sweat. It loves to hear you make excuses, because excuses make you look foolish. And you looking foolish is a great treat for the bully. But when you don’t react, you don’t sweat and you don’t make excuses, the bully loses interest and moves on to his next target. Then you’re free.
The by-product of your freedom is a new skill: The Mastery of Rhythm, because rhythm is an inflexible and essential part of music. You can’t ignore or deny its existence any more than you can or deny ignore the existence of gravity.
So why waste your time fighting it? Count. Counting is the calculator you use to play rhythm. And you can always trust your calculator.
For classical musicians, it’s essential that one counts. Classical musicians are handed printed music, not recordings after all, and the only way to decipher rhythms on the page is by counting. The same goes for piano students studying from a book. In the book is “written” notation. It’s essential that you not only recognize the note names, but where those notes are placed on the rhythmic time grid.
As a reader, you must know where beat one is. And only if you know where beat one is, can you know where beats 2, 3 and 4 are. You could compare it to a calendar where days, months and years are systematically marked off with the passing of time. You need to know where January is, and where Monday is, etc. If you don’t know, there’s no order, and as I’ve said for decades, “The human mind craves order.”
I've noticed that part of the unwillingness to count comes from self consciousness; the student feels silly counting out loud. They feel like they’re being asked to do something that they would have done in first grade.
The student also feels uncomfortable hearing the sound of their voice in the room. Really. It’s not uncommon to ask a student to count out loud — so I can tell if they’re counting correctly, as opposed to me counting for them — and have them burst into a fit of giggles and blushes. I then have to explain what’s happening to them, so I simply insist that “we just get it over with” and count out loud, assuring them that the so-called pain that they’re feeling will disappear in a few minutes when their critical mind gets bored with criticizing.
The critical mind is like a bully. The bully loves to see you squirm and sweat. It loves to hear you make excuses, because excuses make you look foolish. And you looking foolish is a great treat for the bully. But when you don’t react, you don’t sweat and you don’t make excuses, the bully loses interest and moves on to his next target. Then you’re free.
The by-product of your freedom is a new skill: The Mastery of Rhythm, because rhythm is an inflexible and essential part of music. You can’t ignore or deny its existence any more than you can or deny ignore the existence of gravity.
So why waste your time fighting it? Count. Counting is the calculator you use to play rhythm. And you can always trust your calculator.