Count Beats in a Song

Whether you’re a dancer, a musician, or just a music-lover, you know that rhythm is an important foundation of any song, and you’ve probably heard the term beat. A beat is the basic unit of rhythm, the underlying steady pulse of the song, the part that makes you tap your feet. With a little practice and a basic knowledge of music theory, anyone can learn to find and count beats in a piece of music. [1]

Steps

Listening By Ear

  1. Eliminate distractions. When trying to listen for a beat by ear, make sure you give the piece of music all your attention. Use headphones or move to a quiet environment with no noise interruptions.
  2. Pay attention to the lower instruments. If you’re trying to listen for the basic beat of a song, tune out the top instruments like lead guitar or vocals. Try listening for the bass instruments, like the bass guitar or bass drum. [2]
    • If you’re listening to a digital recording, try turning up the bass so that you can hear it more easily.
    • In a song, the bass line often carries the steady beat. Ignore the complex rhythm and melody. Try to pick out what feels like the heartbeat of the song.
  3. Listen to phrasing. A musical phrase is a segment of music that sounds complete in and of itself, often only a few measures long.[3] Practice listening to natural phrasing in music.
    • Think of listening to a song as though you were listening to a conversation. Where would the breaths be? What sounds like a musical “sentence”? Try counting these smaller sections of the music to find where the downbeats fall.
  4. Say it out loud. Again, use your words, or tap your feet along to the beat that you feel. If you are not on the beat, practicing out loud will make it more obvious and easier to get back on track.
  5. Start with songs you know well. Familiarity with a song will make it easier to find the underlying beat or pulse. Likely, you already have an underlying understanding of where the beats fall. In learning to find rhythm, repetition is key.

Using Sheet Music

  1. Know your notes. Before you can begin to count in music, you need to understand how long an individual note or rest lasts. Notes are the periods of sound in a song, and rests represent the lengths of the silences in a piece of music. [4]
    • A whole note lasts for four beats. A half note lasts for two beats. A quarter note lasts for one beat. An eighth note lasts for a half of a beat. A sixteenth note lasts for a quarter of a beat.
    • Rests follow the patterns of the notes. For example, a half rest is a silence that lasts for two beats.
    • A dot next to a rest or a note means that the note or rest is increased by half its value. For example, a dotted half note lasts for three beats. [5]
  2. Measure it. Make sure you understand that every piece of music is divided into parts called measures or bars. This will help you count beats. Every measure in a piece of music has an equal number of beats.
  3. Determine time signature. The time signature appears at the beginning of every piece of music as a fraction. It may change throughout a song, and if it changes, the new time signature will appear at the beginning of a bar. [6]
    • Look to part three below for more information on understanding time signature and determining a time signature by listening to a song.
  4. Use your words. As you read sheet music, articulating the beats in a song make them easier to understand and keep track of. For eighth notes, use “and.” Say, “one-and-two-and-three-and-four.” For sixteenth notes, use “e” and “a.” Say, “one-e-and-a-two-e-and-a-three-e-and-a.”[7]
    • In a song, the downbeat is the first articulated beat in a bar. For example, the “one.” Make sure you find and articulate this first.
    • The upbeat is the “and.” For example, if you are tapping your foot to a beat, the upbeat is the time when your toes are in the air.
  5. Use a metronome. If you know the time signature of a piece, a simple way to help keep a steady tempo while counting beats is to use a metronome. A metronome gives a regular ticking sound with a set rate of beats per minutes. Many free metronomes can be found online.[8]

Determining Time Signature

  1. Understand the importance of time signatures. To count the beats in a piece of music, you must understand the two components of rhythm: meter and tempo. Tempo is simply a description of how fast or slow a piece of music is. Meter is the regular pattern of beats in a song and how those beats are stressed. Time signatures are fractions that describe the meter of a piece of music.[9]
    • Time signatures can represent simple time, compound time, or complex time.
  2. Practice counting simple time signatures first. This will help you familiarize yourself with the process of figuring out and understanding the time signature.[10]
    • Simple time can be duple, triple, or quadruple, which means the top number will always be 2, 3, or 4.
    • In simple time signatures, the bottom number indicates the value of the beat, and the top number gives you the number of beats per measure. For example, in the most common time, 4/4, one beat is a quarter note, and there are four quarter notes per bar.
    • Unlike compound time, in simple time, you feel the beat in multiples of two. This means that you can divide each note in each bar into two. For example, in 2/4 time, the two quarter notes per bar can each be subdivided into two eighth notes. The natural accent falls in multiples of two or three.
    • Tap your feet. When figuring out the time signature by listening to a song, pay attention to the beat of the bass line. Try to determine whether or not the pulse you hear can be naturally divided into two. Listen to determine a repeating pattern of rhythm, and count how many notes occur between each repetition.
    • Remember common time signatures. A lot of Western music uses 4/4 time, so when in doubt, try counting in 4/4 and see if it fits. Familiarize yourself with other time signatures. For example, 3/4 has a waltz feel to it.
  3. Count in compound time. Unlike simple time, compound time is felt in groups of three.[11] For this reason, the dotted note often defines compound time. The top number of a compound time signature is always 6, 9, or 12.
    • In compound time, divide the top number by three to get the number of beats in a bar.[12] The units of the beats are found in the bottom number. For example, in 6/8 time, there are two beats per measure, and each beat lasts three eight notes, or a dotted quarter note.
    • The common children’s song “Row Your Boat” can be counted in 6/8 time, beginning with two dotted quarter notes in “row, row.” Try tapping your feet while you sing this song to understand how compound time feels.
  4. Know that complex time signatures sometimes occur. This means a time signature doesn’t fit into the duple, triple, or quadruple categories. For example, 5/8 is a complex time signature because of the odd number 5.
    • It’s easiest to look at complex time signatures as a combination of simple and compound time signatures.
    • For example, in 5/8, there is one simple beat (two eighth notes) and one compound beat (three eight notes). The order these beats appear in the measure doesn’t matter.
    • When you listen to a song that utilizes a complex time signature, you will notice that some of the beats subdivide into two and some into three.
    • Use your simple and compound counting skills to keep track of complex meters.

Tips

  • If you can, practice with a friend or a group of friends. This will help you figure out when you are off the beat.
  • Remember that songs can have more than one time signature. It can help to work on counting small portions of the song at a time.
  • Don’t get frustrated! Everyone can learn rhythm, but it takes dedicated practice to be able to effortlessly pick out the beats in songs.


Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ http://earsketch.gatech.edu/category/learning/intro-to-beats/what-is-a-beat
  2. ↑ http://www.easyeartraining.com/learn/get-rhythm-finding-the-beat/
  3. ↑ https://www.musictheory.net/lessons/55
  4. ↑ http://www.easyeartraining.com/learn/how-to-hear-and-create-time-signatures/
  5. ↑ http://www.musictheory.net/2015/lessons/14
  6. ↑ http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheory4.htm
  7. ↑ http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/guitar/acapella-40/1889626-
  8. ↑ https://www.metronomeonline.com/
  9. ↑ http://people.carleton.edu/~jlondon/UK%20PPT/HTTAM%20Web%20Version.htm
  10. ↑ http://www.musicarrangers.com/star-theory/t03.htm
  11. ↑ http://www.musicarrangers.com/star-theory/t04.htm
  12. ↑ http://www.key-notes.com/compound-meter.html
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