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Stage 2 Counting Music Course 1 of 4

Counting Bars, Beats and Phrases

Beginner 9 lessons · 41 min

You cannot mix what you cannot hear the shape of. This is the counting: where the bar starts, what a phrase is, and how to find both by ear rather than by looking at a screen. Short lessons, worth repeating until it is automatic.

By the end of this course you will be able to

  • Count a bar in any four-four track and know where it starts
  • Hear a phrase and count through it without losing your place
  • Work out the BPM of a track by ear
  • Pick out the beat, the melody and the bass line separately

Lessons

  1. Counting the BPM of any kind of music

    5:28

  2. Beat, melody and bass line - hearing them apart

    6:08

  3. Counting one bar: one, two, three, four

    2:36

  4. Counting a bar and a phrase in dance music

    3:15

  5. Counting a phrase, and beat mixing to it

    3:21

  6. BPM, pitch, timing and bars together

    4:28

  7. Counting bars and phrases in hip hop

    3:16

  8. Counting explained to a ten-year-old

    Optional 3:13

    Taught to his stepdaughter from scratch - useful if the counting is not landing.

  9. A short counting lesson, start to finish

    Optional 9:12

The stages are the way through

Below this line is the back catalogue, newest first. Useful for browsing, but it is not a course - the videos are in the order they were filmed, not the order to learn them in. Work the stages instead: each one assumes the one before it.

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