Knowing how to count music is one of the most important skills you need to have as a drummer. It’s your job to keep the band in time, and you do that by having solid counting skills to keep all your beats at a steady pulse.
If you’re new to drumming, you may be wondering how to improve your counting skills. In this guide, we’ll give a few tips on it. We’ll also explain everything you need to know relating to music, drumming, and the counting of notes.
The first thing you should do when learning to count is listen and pay attention. It’s easy to count when you’re just playing the drums by yourself with no music. It’s a bit more challenging to count music that you hear.
If you want to know how to count the pulse of a song, you need to listen to it repeatedly to feel the pulse. While counting is important, feeling the beats and rhythms is arguably a lot more important.
From there, you can figure out what counting you need to do.
All counting is rooted in musical theory. Songs can be broken up into notes that are placed into measures, and it’s the notes in the measures that you are counting.
The best way to have solid counting skills is to understand basic subdivisions. These include whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, and sixteenth notes.
When you count, you’ll mainly be counting in quarter notes and eighth notes, but it’s good to know those other ones to give more context to certain rhythms and song parts.
You also need to understand how they fit into measures.
A time signature of a song will tell you how many notes fit into each measure. Understanding this is the next step to having solid counting skills behind the drums.
Luckily, most songs have 4/4 time signatures. That means that there are four quarter notes in every measure. You count to four, and then the next bar starts. It’s incredibly easy to get used to counting like that.
A lot of songs are in different time signatures, though. For example, you’ll need to count six eighth notes when you’re playing in 6/8 time.
It’s a good idea to work on your counting whenever you hear a song. If a song pops up on the radio, try working out its time signature, and then air drum along with it to keep the beat.
If you can keep the beat with a tune while counting out loud, you’ll have mastery over the counting for that specific song.
If you’re at home, hop on the drums and keep the beat while counting out loud. This is the best way to improve your counting skills, as you’ll get accustomed to figuring out how many beats are in every measure.
Intentional practice refers to when you focus on one thing and you work on improving it. There are so many things to practice on the drums, but counting is arguably one of the most important. So, you should set apart intentional practice times to work on your counting skills.
Practice playing different time signatures on the drums, and always count out loud when you want to work on your music counting abilities.
If you listen to one style of music, you’ll get used to how that style is counted. Some styles have very different measure styles and structures, so you should understand how that works as well.
It’s a good idea to listen to rock music and figure out the counting of every song you hear. It’s then a good idea to listen to jazz fusion music and figure the measures out. They’ll be a lot harder to hear, as those songs often have odd time signatures.
Knowing how to count complex music will make counting simple music a lot easier, so it will help to challenge yourself.
Learning how to play different songs on the drums is a natural way of improving your counting. Work out various drum parts from songs you love, and you’ll need to understand how to count the notes to fit them in within the song.
This is implied practicing, which is different from intentional practicing. You should do both!
The best way to count music is in quarter notes, eighth notes, or sixteenth notes. Any song that is in simple time can be counted in quarter or eighth notes. Songs with complicated time signatures often need to be counted in sixteenth notes.
You count all the notes in a measure, and then you start again from count one for the next measure.
Beginners should simply learn how to count quarter notes. In 4/4 time, there are four quarter notes in every bar. Count those over and over while playing the drums, and you’ll get used to counting 90% of music that has been released.
This is when you count to four. Musicians often refer to a four count as being a bar of four counts where nothing is played. With drummers, they may stick four notes on their drumsticks to indicate that a song is about to start.
For most songs, count one is typically where a chord progression starts again. That’s not a definite rule, though. It can be hard to find count one if the song has a complex structure.
Counting music that is straightforward is very easy. Anything that is in simple time is a piece of cake to count behind the drum kit. However, there are some complicated songs out there that have complex counting structures.
You should improve your music counting skills so that you can understand and play those songs. Having good counting skills will make you a much better drummer, so it’s something that you should constantly work on improving.
Drum Teacher
Brett Clur has a Drum Performance Diploma from Trinity College London has been playing drums for over 20 years. He is passionate about advanced concepts and uses his years of experience to teach his students about them. While he is a full-time drum teacher, he is also working on growing a YouTube channel where shares his insights. You can see him playing there, or on Instagram where he posts daily videos.
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