The pros and cons of counting rhythms

Counting is another approach to reading rhythms that involves counting in time with a metronome. If you put on a metronome and count once per click, you are counting a regular division of time.

Each count can be assumed to represent the time period of some note symbol. For example, you may assign the quarter note to the count. The count commonly repeats along with the beats of a time signature:

This defines a grid of equal-duration time periods into which notes can be slotted. If the quarter note is equal to one count, then:

• A half note gets two counts.
• A dotted half note gets three counts.
• A whole note gets four counts.

Counting can thus be used to perform the rhythm by considering how many units each note should be held for. If you have two half notes in 4/4 time, the first half note spans counts 1 and 2, while the second one spans counts 3 and 4.

If instead you have a dotted half note and a quarter note, the first would be held over counts 1, 2, and 3, and the quarter note would be played over count 4. A whole note spans all four counts.

Rests can be counted like notes, but you don't play them. Ties can be approached by considering the total duration of the tied notes. Shorter notes can be handled by using a doubled or quadrupled count.

You've probably seen this before. This system is the most commonly taught approach for rhythm reading, with tens of thousands of resources teaching it. Yet, it has some pros and cons that are rarely discussed, and I'd like to draw attention to them.

With regards to the pros:

• It is easy to understand the logic behind it and how to apply that to reading basic rhythm notation independently.
• How to count rhythms can be taught easily in print media, which cannot reproduce sound.
• Counting can serve as a means of logically understanding what rhythm notation literally represents.
• A vocal association with different rhythm patterns may be an effective memory aid.
• Counting allows deliberately practising rhythms against a metronome.

However, this approach fails to teach several critical aspects of musicality and can become unintuitive as one proceeds to reading more complex notation.

The cons of counting rhythms

People learn most easily when new concepts are introduced gradually, by associating related information. For example, a child will learn to speak just by listening to their parents and other people talking. They spend several years just listening and imitating the sounds they hear. Reading comes later, once they already have considerable experience.

It is straightforward to mimic this approach with rhythm. This happens by learning a large variety of rhythms by ear, clapping them until they can be audiated and become muscle memory. One can then associate the knowledge gained with the equivalent notation; it is easy and intuitive because one is associating the sight of the notation with a performance they are already familiar with.

By comparison, learning rhythms by counting is essentially backwards: the knowledge of how a rhythm should sound does not yet exist. That gap is filled by:

• Using logical analysis to reverse-engineer how to count a rhythm.
• Consciously performing this count over a metronome until it becomes muscle memory.
• Only once the rhythm has become muscle memory can it be subconsciously associated with the notation, allowing for fluent reading.

The biggest problem with counting is that it is blind to the details in human performance that do not follow the strict 'mathematical' subdivision. If you learn rhythms by ear through mimicry of human performances, you'll simultaneously hear all the details in subtle rhythmic shifts, articulations, emphasis, and other inflexions. Learning those will be natural.

It is also often taught that one should read rhythms by counting each musical bar from the start of a piece to the end. Doing this will result in a lot of redundant practice because the notes in music are not random. The same rhythm patterns will be encountered repeatedly.

If one practices counting rhythms from start to finish, some will become kinaesthetic, allowing you to look at some notation and audiate them in your head subconsciously. However, it doesn't do this very reliably. If you observe new musicians taught in this way, they will frequently be reading music and playing smoothly, only to stall abruptly.

This happens because they have either encountered something new to them or something they have not fully learned. Reading stalls because the conscious mind must interrupt to work out how to count something. This can be frustrating, but it's easily avoided with a more systematic learning approach, as discussed in the next heading.

Finally, I also feel that the end goal of counting is not clearly communicated. The goal is to repeat the patterns so that one learns to audiate rhythm notation. Once a rhythm can be audiated, the counting process can be discarded. However, this is never stated in my experience.

If one continues to count rhythms consciously, it will become a hindrance, preventing playing at higher tempos and paying attention to other aspects of musicality.

A better way of utilising counting

Instead of trying to count through the whole rhythm from start to finish for every piece of music, it can be broken down into a series of unique figures. These may then be practised until they can be audiated and reassembled to read the whole rhythm.

Start by looking through the entire song to identify repeating patterns in the rhythm and aspects you can't audiate. Take those things and turn them into short, separate exercises to practice. Write each pattern out on manuscript paper.

Once you have these:

• Work out the counting for each sequence and write it above the notes. Writing the counting above the notes reduces the pressure being put on short-term memory.
• Practice counting it repeatedly to a metronome at a low tempo, until you can audiate the rhythm and the pattern of the rhythm starts to become muscle memory.
• Once you can perform the rhythm easily, discard the conscious counting and perform the rhythm from audiation and muscle memory.

Doing this ensures that when you read the music, you won't encounter unfamiliar rhythms that could cause you to stall.

Taking this further, you can practice the figures paired with other figures in all possible combinations. The core of this approach is discussed in the article Reading rhythms in sheet music. It allows you to systematically internalise the possibility space of rhythms that can be made with a given set of figures.

Remember that the function of counting rhythms is not to perform this process while playing music, because it puts a lot of work on the conscious mind. The method of counting itself is a means to an end that one should seek to discard.

Other things to be aware of

Correct counting does not equal correct performance

Just because you are saying the syllables of a count correctly does not mean that the rhythm you are producing is correct. The time duration between the counts could be inconsistent. Because of this, having an audio reference like a metronome or an experienced musician, as well as the skill of hearing if a note one is performing is early, late, or in time, is still critical.

Counting isn't always representative of human performance

As already hinted, a significant limitation of counting is that it forces everything into a mathematical straitjacket. The rhythm produced from counting is often not what an experienced player would perform, as they will alter the timing for expressive reasons. Also, different musical genres vary their rhythms in unique ways, and those details can only be learned by listening to and imitating musicians experienced in playing a given genre.

Counting can obscure the existence of phrases

As explored in Finding musicality in sheet music, music is structured into phrases, and these phrases will often start and end in the middle of a bar. You may, for instance, encounter music with a phrase like the following:

If someone is taught how to count rhythms without being aware of the larger structures of music first, it can be easy for them to falsely conclude that the structure of music is always strictly aligned with the count and bar lines. This can then lead to them grouping and emphasising notes in ways that don't match the actual phrasing of the music.

I also find that when the count is misaligned with the phrasing, it can feel awkward. In such cases, it may be more intuitive to count in relation to the phrasing, placing the '1' count at the start of the phrase, assuming that the phrase starts on a beat rather than between two beats.

Counting is just a practice tool, and adapting it is fine as long as you know how and why you're doing so.

Counting tuplets is unintuitive

Counting seeks to fit a rhythm into a uniformly spaced grid, and it isn't obvious how one should do this for any rhythm that does not follow a regular 'division by two' structure (such as with tuplets).

Tuplets temporarily alter the subdivision of a rhythm, for instance, by taking three notes and playing them in the duration of two notes of the same value. So how exactly is one supposed to count this?

Counting tuplets entails finding a common divisor for the whole rhythm. For example, in the following case with a triplet, all of the notes can be fit into a regular grid if the longest note in the rhythm is subdivided into 3:

The subdivision needed depends on the note durations used within the entire rhythm. Applying this to any random rhythm you encounter would entail learning to count rhythms at numerous levels of subdivision. You would also need to learn how to quickly identify which to use depending on the types of note symbols that a given rhythm uses.

In practice, people rarely do this, and tuplets are mainly learned by ear, combined with word associations. Three note tuplets (triplets) sound similar to a word like 'tri-pa-let', 'jaf-a'cake' and 'pine-ap-le'.

If you wish to count tuplets, a more practical approach is to isolate them as a figure, precede it with a context, and then work out how to count just this. Practice it until you can audiate it, then perform the figure within the original rhythm without counting it.

Too many subdivisions!

You may have already realised that counting has challenges with notes of very short durations, as each subdivision level doubles the amount of information to keep track of. For example, here is one way that you might count a bar of 32nd notes in 3/4:

When performed, 32nd notes are usually very brief, frequently so much so that it may be impossible to consciously count them at the final performance tempo or even anything close to it, depending on how quickly you can think.

If you wish to count such things, they can be approached much like tuplets. You separate the 32nd note part into a figure prefixed with some notes to put it in a context, and then count it repeatedly at a slow tempo until you can perform it from muscle memory. Then, discard counting and use a metronome, gradually speeding it up to the final tempo.

However, practising in that way leaves a considerable divide between the practice tempo and the tempo at which you will eventually be performing the rhythm. That split makes it difficult to imagine what the result will sound like without having an audio reference available.

Any note symbol can be assigned to the count, not only the quarter note

Basic resources about counting often teach that the quarter note is equal to one count, but actually, the count may be assigned to any note symbol.

For example, time signatures with a '2' at the bottom represent a rhythm where the beat is assigned to the half note. For instance, 2/2 is counted like 2/4. The numbered count is transferred to the half note, and thus, quarter notes are counted like eighth notes, and eighth notes are counted like 16th notes.

The effect of this for 2/2 in relation to 4/4 is to double the tempo (unless you are told otherwise with a metronome mark). It would also typically shift the emphasis. In 4/4, one may emphasise all four beats of the bar, but doing that in 2/2 would often sound wrong, and one should instead emphasise the notes falling on the two numbered counts.

Thus, if you find counting a valuable part of your music practice, it is worthwhile learning to count where the numeric count is assigned to different note symbols.

Mainstream counting syllables don't communicate the difference between 3/4 and 3/8 or 6/8

Counting both the time signatures '3/4' and 3/8' is commonly taught using '1, 2, 3'. However, this can be unclear because these signatures are frequently used to represent different things in music.

Typically, 3/4 is used to notate music structured into groups of three beats, while 3/8 commonly represents music where a single beat is split into three sub-beats.

I feel it provides more transparent communication if the number counts are used to represent the beat, and so '1, 2, 3' can be used for 3/4:

Then, instead of also using the counting '1, 2, 3' for 3/8, it can be counted '1, e, a'. The same idea easily also extends to compound time signatures like 6/8, which can be counted '1, e, a, 2, e, a':

There are other systems of vocal association

While associating rhythms with vocal sounds may be a helpful memory aid, it is far from the only way. Some other well-known systems include Kodaly rhythm syllables, which associate rhythm figures with unique vocal sounds, and fruit rhythms, which associate figures with the innate rhythmic timing of words in someone's native language.

In principle, one could associate rhythms with sounds in infinite ways, and you may find that other approaches come more naturally to you – at least, if you find vocal associations beneficial to begin with, which isn't a given.

Closing thoughts on counting rhythms

Western music developed during a period of more primitive technology. If a mechanical metronome and your ability to count are your only tools available, it is easy to see how counting would become the default approach for teaching rhythms.

Today, with considerably more technology available, it is trivial to convert any notated rhythm you encounter into audible sound.

Counting can be a valuable tool in music practice, providing a means of logically understanding what rhythm notation literally describes, to work out how a rhythm would sound without needing to hear it, or as a means of consciously practising against a metronome.

However, I do not believe that counting should be considered 'the only valid method of teaching rhythm'.

Rudimentary counting is often taught to beginner musicians, enabling them to read simple rhythms. However, the process of counting rhythms has several evident failings, such as leaving beginner musicians stranded when they encounter more complex notation.

This is why I opted to teach rhythm by ear in Serious Ocarina Player: it is clear how the approach may apply to any existing rhythm notation. Educators should seek to empower learners to pursue things independently, and I do not think it is OK to begin with an approach that leaves people asking, 'How do you count this?'

Learning rhythm involves training the subconscious brain to predict when a series of notes should be played in time. Counting does this through conscious repetition against a metronome. Learning rhythms by ear instead achieves the same by directly imitating the correct audio performances of rhythm figures.

Both approaches can be used to deeply internalise the possibility space of rhythms that music notation can represent. I suggest trying different approaches, such as learning rhythms by ear, counting, and any other approaches that intrigue you, and then applying them as you find best for your own music practice.

There will always be aspects of human performance that are impossible to learn through counting. This is because they would require subdividing time into units so small that they would exceed the capacity of the logical mind.

While it is possible to analyse it mathematically, the art of music is not mathematics. Music is a form of human artistic and emotional expression, and any learning approach which allows you to express yourself is valid.