Teaching Counting Skills

Teaching Counting Skills

Ed Dumas

I used to tell my students fairly often that “90% of errors that ALL musicians make, including the many adults that I have conducted, happen due to musicians just not counting on long notes and in rests!” In contrast to that statement, most beginning band students obsess over correct pitches, because that is all that they know at that point. But once they have learned their first handful of pitches on their instrument and they have begun to play more conventional concert band music, they really should turn their attention to counting to fix more errors.

Another saying that I have used with my students more times than I can count is that “A right pitch put in the wrong place will sound just as bad as a wrong pitch put in the right place!” Bad counting and a bad sense of time are much more unforgivable to our audiences than the odd incorrect pitch. This is because even though an incorrect pitch is fairly noticeable, it is usually played just once and it is done. In contrast to that, bad counting and a bad sense of time seem to just go on forever in the ears of the audience.

As a result, I have focused more on counting skills with my students, and left pitch corrections within the realm of student control. Over time, that strategy has paid off well. Sometimes I still need to be involved with pitch correction, but certainly, a larger portion of my work in rehearsal was on time and counting than on pitch correction. Here are some general guidelines for teaching some basic counting skills to your band students.

Tonguing

Without a doubt, tonguing is an absolute predecessor to counting. If students are not able to articulate with their tongue on their instrument, there is little point in trying to teach counting skills until the tonguing is mastered! The number of flute and sax players that I have seen that cannot count is so large that it has raised that problem in my mind to the level of a cliché.

The reason for this problem is that those are the two most common instruments on which students seem to have trouble learning to tongue. With flute, it is because beginners must firm up their embouchure corners to develop some resistance in the air stream before tonguing will happen. With sax, it is most often because of bad posture so that the sax is too low on the neck strap and the head is tilted downwards towards the low sax. This means that the reed is aimed down inside the student’s mouth and cannot be reached by the tongue. In either case, lack of tonguing practically guarantees non-existent counting. Fix those problems first, and then the students can move forward with counting.

In contrast to that, it is also almost a cliché in my mind that the best counters in the young band will be the trumpet players and other high resistance instruments such as the oboe or maybe clarinet. Since they have greater resistance, they can articulate better, and therefore develop counting skills faster.

Know the Rules

The next most common thing that I have found among students that are having trouble with counting is not knowing the rules. If the students cannot identify what a quarter note looks like, or what an eighth note looks like, they will be completely unable to learn the system of counting. Despite what students say and the protests that they may make, some things just need to be memorized. The various shapes of music from eighth notes up to whole notes just need to be memorized. Not knowing the rules means that you cannot play the game!

Here is a little scenario I have shown to students many times. If you ask a class of beginning band students how many of those students think that chess is difficult to play, you will usually get a fair number of hands raised. Then if you ask these students with their hands raised how many know how the rules of chess, you will find that most of those students who think that chess is difficult do not know the rules of the game.

Then, try identifying the students in the room who know how to play chess. Ask those students if they think chess is a difficult game to learn and how many rules there are. Most of the time, those students will answer that it is a fairly simple game in terms of the rules that must be memorized. There are only about a dozen or so rules that beginning chess players need to know, and most of those have to do with how the pieces move and how they attack.

Once you have been shown those basic rules of chess, the complex part pf the game comes in the strategies used later to win. Strategies, though, are not the same as rules. To begin learning chess, just about anyone can memorize the starting rules in about 5 minutes.

Making music is very much the same as chess. The rules for beginning to make music are very simple, and for those people who do not know the rules, music seems complex. But once you know that a whole note gets 4 counts (in common time), a half note gets 2 counts, and so on, making music then is quite simple to learn.

It is the teacher's job, then, to make sure that everyone knows the rules. Show it to them on the whiteboard, draw their attention to the note values when they are playing, and give them plenty of written assignments to reinforce their learning. You are serving them well to make sure they have the “rules of this game” memorized.

How Many Counts?

In your assignments on memorizing the lengths (values) of the notes, in the beginning, you will ask them “How many counts on this note?” But soon, go beyond that question, and start to ask them “WHICH counts go with this note?” Now they have to indicate that they understand the placement of that note within the measure, and this is done by stating which counts go with that note. For example, if a measure is in 4/4 time and your example has a half note in the measure, the students will need to tell you if the counts associated with that half note are “1,2” “2,3” or “3,4.” (Technically, “2,3” should not be an option as that note value should be marked with two quarters tied, instead of a half note as you should not cover up the invisible bar line in the middle of a 4/4 measure, but the students will not know that yet).

Once the students get into the routine of marking down WHICH counts go with the various notes, have them do this for an entire line of 8 measures of music. Now they will have 1-2-3-4 marked for each measure according to the types of notes in each measure.

Every once in a while, a student would mark off all of the notes from the beginning to the end as 1-2-3-4 but do it irrespective of the length of the note. For example, the first note gets a 1, the next note gets a 2 (regardless of how long the first note is), the next note gets a 3 (regardless of how long the first two notes are), and so on. When this happens, you will find things like 1-2-3-4 going over the barlines into the next measure which indicates the student has not considered the length of the various notes. This means they have yet to learn the “Rules of the Game” that tell us things like a half note gets two counts, and so on. Direct them back to those rules and they cannot move on until the rules are memorized.

Every Full Measure Begins with “1”

To correct students just numbering off the notes as 1-2-3-4 regardless of the length of the notes, I have sometimes used the saying “EVERY full measure begins with “1”, no matter which time signature you are in.” Students that then begin a measure with something other than “1” should direct themselves to go back and find out what went wrong.

The trouble with the above statement is that young students are very good at over-generalizing. As soon as they hear “Every measure begins with 1,” they will then create another rule that says “Every measure ends in 4.” That second rule will be quickly found false since it could end with “+” “a” or even something else. Bring this up to them that they cannot over-generalize and create false rules.

Learn to Count Extended Rests

Extended rests are when students have a large black horizontal bar in their music with a number over the bar. The number tells the students how many measures to rest out, not how many counts. Then show the students how to use the system of counting extended rests which places a different number on count one of each measure which will be counting the measures at the same time they are counting the beats within the measures. Here is an example of 8 measures of extended rest:

1 2 3 4 2 2 3 4 3 2 3 4 4 2 3 4 5 2 3 4 6 2 3 4 7 2 3 4 8 2 3 4

Just about every group of concert band musicians that these students will experience will count their extended rests this way. Simply taking a minute once to have these students say this out loud will help the students keep their place in the music better.

Understand That Counting in Music is Different Than Math

The trouble we have with math and music is that the two mediums quite often use the same language descriptors and symbols. Yet, the word “Counting” in math means something completely different than in music, and sometimes students need to be told directly what those differences are.

If we were truly counting like a mathematician, we could come up with something that says there are 3426 beats in a given piece of music, but does that help a musician? Not a bit. We just do not care how many counts there are in a piece of music. Musicians only care about not getting lost. Counting for us just means not losing your place in the music. More on that in a moment.

Here is one of the fundamental ways that music and math differ. I have used this illustration many times with my students. If a mathematician was counting out a whole note in steps, he would do the following. As he takes his first step, he would say "One." In the subsequent steps, he would say "Two," "Three," and "Four." Then, he would place his feet together and be happy where he is standing having counted out four steps.

The musician would begin by leaving his feet together and saying "One." For the musician, "one" begins when you say "One." But, one does not end until you say "Two," at which point you have now stepped out one step and said "two." That is the end of one and the beginning of two. But two carries on until you step out again and say "Three." Step out again and say "Four" which is now the ending of three and the beginning of "Four." Step out one last time and say "One" again, and this is the end of four. At "One" the musician would now be happy and place his feet together to stand there having counted out 4 steps.

Notice that the mathematician and the musician end up in the same place on the floor, but the way they got there is fundamentally different. Also, note that the musician went back to "One," whereas the mathematician is ready to carry on with five, six, seven, and so on. The mathematician said four syllables in his counting, but the musician said five, and still ended up in the same place. That is because the musician marks the beginning AND endings of beats.

Now it should be clearer to the students that the mathematician and the musician have completely different definitions of counting. The musician is trying to stay in the correct place in TIME in the music, whereas the mathematician is just counting the number of beats.

Now here is another illustration that should help to draw this to a close for your students. Imagine if a mathematician was playing a pitch on "An eighth note tied to a quarter note tied to a half note tied to a whole note tied to a half note tied to a quarter note tied to an eighth." The mathematician would be concerned with how long this note is to be held. He would likely have to stop playing to mathematically add it all up. By the time he has figured that out, the note has gone completely past, and he has missed it.

In that scenario, the musician is not concerned with how long the note is. He is only concerned with "When does it end?" When I draw this out for students on the board and then ask them that question, they will often start trying to add it all up. Some will finally get to the right number and say "Eleven." At this point, I would say to the students that "Eleven is a number, and my question asked you a WHEN. WHEN does this note end?" After they start to stumble around like mathematicians again I would clarify with "The ending of this note is a place, and that place has a name. What is the name of that place?"

Then they start to begin to think like musicians, and sooner or later someone would come out with "The And of Three" which is the correct answer assuming you are in 4/4 time. That leads to a longer discussion about naming the places in music. Those places are 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ("+" being short form for "and"). So, now the REAL question becomes clear. The question is not "How long is this note?" Rather, it is "Which counts does this note get?" or "Name the place where this note ends?"

Now they can begin to get some idea that we musicians do not care one whit how long a note is. All we really care about is when to get off of it. This is the nature of keeping your place in the music.

Mark In The Counting

Now going back to your original concept of knowing the “Rules of the Game,” you can see that the original question of “How many counts does this note get?” is too simple. A much better concept is “WHICH counts does this note get?”

Students can now learn to write “1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +” under a measure with one symbol for each eighth note, two for a quarter note, and then three symbols for a dotted-quarter note. Four symbols for a half note, six for a dotted half note, and so on. This answer now tells us not only how long the note is (duration) but also its placement within the measure. (More senior students will expand to 1e+a2e+a…)

Final Thoughts

Note that I would suggest to my band students that they should not write the

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + system underneath all of their band music as a standard practice, despite what I said just above. That is because writing this underneath all of the music just messes up the page so much that there is no way that they can read both the note heads as well as the counting information that they just wrote down. The faster the music goes the more likely they are going to have to abandon one of those forms of information.

Instead, have them use that counting system on a different piece of paper just below their music. They can then write down 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + to help them figure out the durations in a given measure. Then take that extra piece of paper away and just play the music now that they have it figured out. Everything else is just too much to look at.

Any amount of time that you spend with your beginning students on learning the counting system will be time well spent. Have your students count extended rests out loud to ensure they all understand how that system works. Having your students count out loud while clapping their musical parts helps them practice the counting system. And, use written assignment pages from a theory book in class or for homework to practice marking down the counting to learn how to dissect more complex rhythms. Any time spent here in their early years will pay you back hundreds of times over in their senior years. Not doing this will leave your students stuck in very basic-level music for years to come.

Ed Dumas is a retired band director who taught his entire career in the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows School District. Ed is now living with his lifelong partner Laurie, and their little dog Sprocket in Parksville, BC.  Ed & Laurie also work as Mid-Island reps for Tapestry Music while enjoying making music in retirement.

You can find Ed’s other writings for the MusicED Blog at: https://www.tapestrymusic.com/news.aspx

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