Counting Time

Everything so far has been about pitch. The other half of music is time, and it is the half that gets a player thrown out of a band.

Music is divided into bars, and each bar holds a fixed number of beats. The time signature says how many: the top number of 4/4 means four beats in a bar, and the bottom number says a quarter note gets one beat. Four-four is so common it is called common time, and the overwhelming majority of rock, pop, blues and funk is in it. Three-four gives three beats to a bar and sounds like a waltz.

Note values divide the beat. A whole note lasts four beats, a half note two, a quarter note one. Keep halving and you get eighth notes, two to a beat, counted one-and-two-and, and sixteenth notes, four to a beat, counted one-e-and-a.

Beats are not equal in weight, either. In four-four the first beat is strongest and the third is next; two and four are weak, which is exactly why drummers put the snare there and why audiences clap on them.

Metronome

Set it to 100 BPM in 4/4. Count one-two-three-four out loud with it until you stop having to think about it, then count eighths: one-and-two-and.

This track runs at 100 beats per minute, the same tempo you just set.

Do not play. Count. Find beat one of a bar and count four repeatedly, all the way through, checking every so often that you are still on beat one when the chord changes. Most changes happen on beat one, so the harmony will tell you when you have drifted.

Then play one single muted strum on beat one of each bar, and nothing else. That is harder than it sounds and it is the foundation everything else sits on.

A minor at 100 BPM. Count first, then one strum per bar.