Reading Music: Counting, or "feeling" the rhythm?

[Samatza]

Continuous practice helps with this, not hours a day but consistent, short sessions.

I start by focusing on the rhythm not the notes. Play that rhythm on one note and eventually you associate the written pattern with the sound, then add the notes.

Once you have it down you’ll feel the pattern in the context of the musical genre so it will vary slightly.

After 18 months of not playing or reading, a new day job I’m going to be rusty when we get back into it. I’ll use the same approach though to re-familiarise myself with reading.

 

[JRA]

do you find yourself always counting (1e+a...), or do you more "feel" the rhythms, having seen them so many times?

i'm with those who've posted the language comparisons: when learning you may be 'counting out' a lot of rhythms, but as you become more fluent you naturally recognize familiar patterns/contexts. depending on the music piece and the experience of the reader: anyone can be 'caught' counting out a bar/phrase for clarification. as with most things = the more you do it the more you "just know."

good luck with your rhythm studies!

 

[logdrum]

Get an Etude book - something modern. You need muscle and eye memory, so you can recognize most notation instantly and know how it sounds. Ear + muscle + eye work as one unit. This is the key to plain sight reading. You really want to get to a space where you are reading one bar ahead. Is that your goal, like a n orchestra player or for hire that can do cold reads? Or do you want to just read and study new material and memorize it and glance once in a while to make sure you got it right. The former takes practice and if it has not stuck for 40 years, it will be very hard to get proficient. My friend a cello player in Washington state, retired and after 6 - 8 months of not playing so much and thus reading, she told me, it took almost a month to get back. She was playing professionally and teaching for 42-45 years

Bach Cello suites - that will keep you busy. Ties specially over bars, get some Latin/Latin Jazz book

There is also theoretical or harmony analytical reading, where you probably work off chord charts. and in actual playing you sight read intended lines by the composer or arranger. As a bass player - even a jazz bass player, this is probably what you want as well. Unless you have to play the head - this is probably what you will need. How many songs have a bass line that is unique from bar 1 to bar 32 -

It's mostly /: :/ - Classic example is "So What". This piece will challenge your counting chops. It's 16 bars of D Dorian, 8 bars of Eb Dorian + 8 back to D. If you can play the head for like 5 repetition and do not get lost on the count Then I would call it progress.

For counting and developing that internal clock. Set metronome to the 2 and 4.

Lastly get a teacher. I just got back to playing piano seriously and already have good reading skills. I play woodwinds as well and play arco on the double bass. I still got a teacher, someone younger than me. She corrected many bad habits and improve my reading of the piano which is polyphonic. A teacher is worth 100 youtube videos.

Good luck. In the words of Snoop Dog -"Read a chart everyday"

 

[berklee46]

Two great books I’ve found that can help in practicing reading various rhythms to the point of being able to recognize them are Charles Colin / Bugs Bower’s “Bass Clef Rhythms Complete” and Louis Belsson’s “Modern Reading Text in 4/4”.

Even if you don’t have your bass, you can get some great practice in by grabbing either of these books and clapping or tapping along.

And if you really want your head to explode, check out Louis Belsson’s “Odd Time Reading Text” that will immediately humble all but the best sightreaders out there.

 

[Renaissance]

I've never really been able to count properly beyond the simplest of rhythms! I'm not sure what I do. I know where the beat is and I know the rhythmic patterns so I just play. I've read treble and bass clef for 50 years now and I really don't remember ever counting.

Glad I could help!

 

[elberon]

Put your bass down and conduct the beat with your right hand with a pencil, you’ll need to learn some basic conducting patterns first. Pronounce the rhythmic attacks either with a neutral syllable like “ta” or by counting by saying the beat numbers (for ex. 1 and 2 and 3 ee and a 4). Don’t stop and start, keep the beat going and steady. After you master the rhythms pick up the bass and work out fingerings etc. combined with the rhythms you’ve learned through the conducting process. Warning, this is to prepare music and not how you’d approach it in a live sight reading situation. Get a good progressive book like Rhythmic Training by Robert Starer. Good luck!

 

[SLO Surfer]

To follow up on my earlier post of doing both; when sight reading new music I’ve never seen or read before, at a gig, on stage, in front of an audience, I will do both. For instance, if there’s 12 bars of quarter notes (or some kind of simple repetitive rhythm) I don’t need to count. But if I see a more complicated passage coming up, I’ll start counting in subdivisions (“1 and 2 and”, or “1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a”) at least a couple bars before I get to that part. And if there’s a multi-bar rest in a piece you’re sight reading in live performance, you better be counting instead of “feeling” it or you’re not getting the gig again!

I agree with the people here who say to count out loud. I now teach middle school band, and having them count the steady beat out loud (“1 2 3 4” or subdivided as we get better, “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and”) while clapping written out rhythms is the best tool/practice I’ve found for improving their rhythmic sight reading skills. When clapping the rhythms, hold your hands together for the note length. So if it’s a whole note, you clap once when you say “1” and hold your hands together while you count the duration of the note value, “2 3 4.” If you have a rest, bounce/hold your hands apart for the duration. Luckily, with string instruments, you can actually play your instrument while counting a steady beat out loud. I still suggest clapping as part of your reading practice, as it focuses entirely on rhythmic note value reading.

 

[elberon]

One other thing, the whole purpose to conducting the beat (background) with the right hand is to provide a reference point for the rhythmic attacks (foreground) of beat divisions and subdivisions that occur before and/or after the beat. If you were to ever actually conduct an ensemble you'd quickly be able to tell when people come in early or late based on the position of your conducting pattern when the attack happens. Also, be sure you know the difference between simple meter (beat is undotted and divides into two equal parts and subdivides into four parts), and compound meter (beat is dotted and divides into three equal parts and subdivides into six). This is important to determine the "beat value" in a passage and what note to conduct.

 

[CharleyJackson]

What SLO Surfer says!

As a beginner reader I will sometimes play the notes and just gloss over the general idea of the rhythm just to see if it makes any musical sense to me. Following this I will clap out the rhythm and then plug in the notes, carefully detailing bar by bar. Not necessarily always the way I do it but I have found that is the way I cope/approach notation that might intimidate me.

Just finished the talkingbass.net sight reading course Vol 1 and 2.
Took me from nonreader status to one who will at least want to take a look at notation with some understanding and appreciation.

 

[SteveCS]

...
...N otever yonead herestog oodpr acticehe rethough, so it helps to understand rhythms well enough to count/play them even when they're notated kinda funky.
...

Excellent illustration.

 

[Papageno]

I work on hearing/playing accurately every individual 8th notes in a 4/4 bar (isolated 8th note, or any combination of 2 8th notes in a bar), without the help of a steady metronome tic (only on beat one of every other bar to control my accuracy). At first, it helps to count, but with enough practice, one can feel (which is the goal) the precise placement of each 8th note.

 

[nonohmic]

Count, then feel. Then count again when I'm out of practice.

 

[MarkA]

Excellent illustration.

Thanks. Gave the spell-checker fits, but, then, it's given me fits before, so I guess it's only fair.

 

[OldSchoolFlats]

I work on hearing/playing accurately every individual 8th notes in a 4/4 bar (isolated 8th note, or any combination of 2 8th notes in a bar), without the help of a steady metronome tic (only on beat one of every other bar to control my accuracy). At first, it helps to count, but with enough practice, one can feel (which is the goal) the precise placement of each 8th note.

For rhythms, I can pretty much do that, though ties will slip me up sometimes. Still working on the pitches though (haven't read since the mid-80s).

Once the 16ths, notes and rests, enter the picture, I get lost pretty fast though. My syncopated rhythms are an embarrassment, but I am working on that.

 

[SteveCS]

For rhythms, I can pretty much do that, though ties will slip me up sometimes. Still working on the pitches though (haven't read since the mid-80s).

Once the 16ths, notes and rests, enter the picture, I get lost pretty fast though. My syncopated rhythms are an embarrassment, but I am working on that.

I found it useful sometimes to see things as fractals - patterns within patterns. Here, A, B and C are all essentially the same thing just within different time frames:

 

[Metropolis1]

Hi everyone !
Sorry if it's been said in a way I didn't understand.
Do you think it's a good thing to learn new rhythm patterns with music that you already know how it must sound?

Or just to maintain some acquired skills ?

Or is it to easy and not worth the time ?

 

[MarkA]

Hi everyone !
Sorry if it's been said in a way I didn't understand.
Do you think it's a good thing to learn new rhythm patterns with music that you already know how it must sound?

Or just to maintain some acquired skills ?

Or is it to easy and not worth the time ?

I think that relating rhythms to things you already know by ear can be useful - an accessible entey - and it's good to see how they're employed in a musical context outside of an exercise. Deciphering a rhythm you already know by ear can help you to understand it better and make connections between pieces of music. All good things. I think that you want to be able to understand and execute rhythms outside of stuff you've heard before, though.

That said, most of the rhythms you encounter can be thought of as combinations of (or elaborations upon) simpler rhythms, so there shouldn't be too much you hear that is entirely foreign and new.

I'm not sure that I answered your question - whatever helps you to understand and apply the rhythms - ideally in a transferable way - is good. I wouldn't worry about "too easy --" making something easy to understand is good - unless you feel your approach is somehow holding back your learning.

 

[Metropolis1]

You answered very well.
It can't be a bad thing but deciphering totally new stuff is important too.

And I love to do that, I just don't want to learn a new pattern in a wrong way. It would be terrible.