Just be sure you’re counting beats and not notes. If you count the notes of the bass riff from “Money” you’ll come up with eight, not seven. But if you tap out evenly spaced beats while listening to it, you’ll find that the cycle does last seven beats before repeating, The second and third notes are part of the same beat; they’re just shorter than the other notes.
What he said.
I have really enjoyed this thread. My wife and I have recently gone back to a dance studio that teaches ballroom very well, but hasn’t seemed to update their music ever. I am getting sick of the Lawrence Welk music and thought I would bring them a new cd of waltzes to try as an example.
I have a large collection of mp3s and have been able to find more than half the songs listed in this thread. As Quercus said, many of these songs have the right beat, but have a ridiculous tempo. I was counting to myself 123, 123, 123 and not 1…2…3… 1…2…3… - afterall a waltz is graceful.
The cool thing about the last club we were at is they played a lot of new music, that had the right beat. I have heard about all the Frank Sinatra I need to.
With absolutely no musical training, I am completely lost as to how to count beats to a bar. You might as well be asking me to count trees in a forest. I know, I asked. I thought maybe I could learn something, but without some basic knowledge I’m lost.
Can you hear that some notes are stressed more strongly than others? (Some people can’t, and if you can’t, well, this is never going to make sense to you.)
If you can hear that some beats are heavier, count a “one” on each heavy beat, then keep counting each beat till the next heavy beat. For lots and lots of music, the count will be, probably, ONE two three ONE two three ONE two three (a waltz rhythm), or ONE two three four ONE two three four ONE two three four.
Simple music sticks to these pretty straightforwardly; more complicated music might skip the occasional beat (so you hear ONE two three [silence] ONE two three [silence]), or divvy them up slightly differently (ONE two-and three four, ONE two-and three four), or slide the beat around (jazz, where it can get fairly complicated).
But generally, if you count along, and just keep counting evenly, you’ll find the rhythm that underlies even the most complicated music.
If, of course, you can hear that some beats are stressed and some aren’t. 
I’m not a musical prodigy, but that is one of my top 10 favorite songs of all time and I am fairly certain that is not in 3/4 time. Also, the full title is “Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)”
Also, **Tool of the Consipracy **mentioned “Take this Waltz” by Leonard Cohen, which is a fantastic tune that would be great for waltzing. (I think - I’m not a waltzer).
Yes, I suppose i can hear that some beats are heavier; I kinda get it. Perhaps I don’t know when to start or stop counting though.
MrFloppy mentioned “Money” and that "You can count to 7 and it ‘fits’. "
I hear a repeating “Dum da duh-duh-duh, Dum da duh-duh” in the bass line; that doesn’t have 7 beats, more like 9? If I try clapping along to the lyrics I feel more like 4 or 5 claps per line of lyrics would be appropriate.
See, this is where I’m totally ignorant of what a beat in a line is. Hey I’m a huge fan of music, with a lot of likes and dislikes. I also have an innate ability to be able to tap out the melody to songs (one note at a time) on a piano, or most other musical instruments (guitar, recorder, etc.) but have no clue about this beat stuff. And it looks like I never will without any formal education, which I’m not about to embark on. But thanks for trying to fight my ignorance!
A beat isn’t necessarily a note, or vice versa. If the song is in 7/4, that means there are seven beats to the measure and that the basic counting unit will be the quarter note. I believe that in this case you have 8 notes in the bar, with the second, third, and forth notes that you hear being a triplet over beats 2 and 3. A triplet is basically a way of squeezing three notes in where you would normally put in only two. Everything else in the bass line is a quarter note.
Biffy maybe you can confirm? You know we didn’t use to be able to go out at night, at UCSD, without hearing Dark Side Of The Moon from some dorm window.
That’s a really hard song to count. Come back to it after you’ve tried something easier.
One thing - for most rock songs, the “beats” are exactly the same length and they never stop through the song. So ignore the lyrics (because some words stretch long or short or no one is singing anything at all at that moment) and the notes (same reason), and listen for something in the music that happens like a ticking clock (oftentimes the drums or bass) all the way through the song.
So, pick a song (not Money - run from Money), and start tapping along with that. Remember, all taps should be the same length, no two should be closer together or faster or slower. Absolutely even. Tune out everything else but the pulse of the music. You might even bore yourself.
Once you’re tapping along successfully, then notice that at a regular interval, something happens, the drums are a little louder, another instrument plays on the beat, there’s some kind of emphasis. That’s “1.” then count taps until that emphasis happens again. Keep doing it over and over. In most rock songs, you should always reach the same number before you get to “1” again.
I managed “Manic Depression”, though it took some work. It’s good for a party trick and that’s about it.
Look up the Enya songs I listed on YouTube to see what you think of them, two of them are gentler than Manic Depression by a goodly deal IMO.
Yes, I suppose waltzing to Amazing Grace would seem kind of odd.
Thought of another Dwight Yoakam waltz: South of Cincinnati
And from the world of bluegrass, there’s Kentucky Waltz by Bill Monroe.
Leaffan – Amarinth gives good advice.
Here’s a really easy one:
Raindrops on
Roses and
Whiskers on
Kittens [pause],
Bright copper
Kettles and
**Warm ** woolen
Mittens [pause]
Brown paper
Packages
**Tied ** up in
Strings-sss [pause]
**These ** are a
**Few ** of my
Favorite
Things-sss [pause]
“Lucille”, by Kenny Rogers. (You know, “You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille/Four hungry children and a crop in the field” etc.)
Here’s a YouTube clip of South of Cincinnati (audio only).
And here’s Bill Monroe performing a couple of waltzes: Blue Moon of Kentucky, and Kentucky Waltz. Well, Blue Moon starts as a waltz, but then kicks it up a notch. (I believe his earliest recording of the tune was waltz all the way through.) Not Monroe’s best performance. Track down the original recordings.
This sounds really lame, but it works: As I listen to the song, or imagine hearing it in my mind, I count out the beats using the fingers of one hand–thumb, index, middle finger, ring finger, and pinkie, then back to the thumb if necessary. With a bit of practice you get to a point where your fingers will just work automatically so you don’t have to think “one…two…three…four”. With “Money” I find that at the end of that bass riff I am on my index finger for the second time around, so that’s 5+2=7.
A very cool blues/classic R&B trick is to anticipate the chord change on the the last half beat of the previous bar…check out “Green Onions” (and a lot of Booker T. and the MGs’ stuff).
Hey, I checked mine by dancing to it before I posted it (I’ve had over four years of dance lessons - I even danced backwards, 'cause I’m a girl )!
(My cheat for finding beats is to ask my husband, the former percussionist. He always knows what the beat is.)
You know those people who never “get” trigonometry?
Well, I’m not one of them, but my brain isn’t wired for the aforementioned musical beats.
Which brings me to a slightly different, although related, musical hijack:
How in the hell do musicians play two completely different musical melodies with each hand? There was an earlier thread with a youtube link to a young musician playing the Simpsons theme on two guitars, but that’s not too exceptional. Prime example, Ray Manzarek played bass with his left hand, while he screamed away lead organ on most Doors music. How the hell can the brain do a recurring “bum-da-da-bum” on one hand and then total improvisation on the other. My brain is not wired accordingly.
I read somewhere (I think it was in From Abbey Road to Zapple Records by Judson Knight) that George Harrison told George Martin “I want it to sound like this” after watching something about the music of Vienna on tv.
My husband has suggested “Iris” by the GooGoo dolls. He also mentioned the disclaimer that it turns into 4/4 during the bridge, though.
ETA: He was able to come up with the Avril Lavigne song that I couldn’t remember - “I’m With You.”
Do you ever do the Viennese Waltz? Simply put, it is the waltz on meth. You just do relatively simple steps (lots of alternating half turns) but travel around the room at about the pace of a light jog.
It is incredibly fluid and graceful when done well… but still very fast.