Why Counting Counts

Why Counting Counts 

(R Hill Feb 2019)

How you count has a big impact on how your musicianship presents to others.

There are many, many ways to count.

Counting is not keeping time, counting is organizing time.

It is easy to imagine that you are counting twice as slowly as you actually are counting (i.e., you think you are counting in quarters, but you actually are counting in 8ths).

The slower the unit of counting, the more intuitively the space between pulses has to be filled.

It is possible, with practice, to count in two different ways at the same time (think, for example, counting four against three).

There is no need to assume that we must be consistent in the way we count.  Therefore, how we count is contextual.

How musicians habitually count is most probably culturally determined.