Rhythm Counting: Ta, Ta, 1, 1, Walk, Walk, What?!

Rhythm Counting - so many ways to do it, what's a student to do? | composecreate.com

Does Numeric Rhythm Counting Work?

I grew up with a teacher who used numeric rhythm counting. And as you know, we are mostly likely to teach the same way we were taught and/or the same way we learn, so I have always insisted that my students count 1-2-3-4 or 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & religiously.

But if you have taught many beginners, you know that numeric rhythm counting doesn’t make much sense to young students. You can see their bewilderment when you try to get them to transition from this way of counting:

rhythm counting

to this way of counting:

rhythm numeric counting

If you are lucky enough to have an articulate student, they may have even asked, “Why do I say 2 or 3 or 4 under these quarter notes when they only get 1 beat?”

My explanations for this never seem to help!

Fingering Further Complicates Rhythm Counting

To make matters worse, students not only have to worry about the numbers of the beats, but also the numbers of their fingers! “This is beat 1, but you need to play it with your 3rd finger!”

rhythm counting finger

Clear as mud.

Some of the methods are clever and try to teach quarters as “walk, walk, walk, walk” and then “run-ning, run-ning” for eighth notes. This is a good idea until you get a student who thinks that running just means to go as fast as possible!

Syllabic Counting Might Work for a While

Recently, I’ve tried the syllabic way of counting:

syllabic way of counting

and I love the way it’s working! It seems a lot less confusing because:

  • Syllabic counting doesn’t use numbers at all so there is no confusion with counting numbers.
  • The syllables don’t have any innate meaning themselves (such as walk or run).
  • It can be used for a long time before switching to numeric counting.
  • You can introduce much harder rhythms and help students master these long before they play them.
  • The syllables have their own rhythm. For example, say “ta-ti” and you notice that the “ta” gets a heavier emphasis than the “ti” which is helpful when you are teaching eighth notes.

Here is it with more variety of rhythms:

rhythm counting syllables

I’m only using this way of counting until students are old enough to understand beats and such things. When that happens will be different for each child. But I like how the transition from syllabic counting to numeric (1 2 3 4) counting works much better!

The great thing is that I can choose whatever counting method I want when I’m using Rhythm Menagerie and Rhythm Manipulations! Only the introductory pages of each unit use any kind of numeric counting, so I can just skip these pages or write in my own counting. The majority of the pages are designed so that I can use what ever counting method I want with my kiddos.

And since Rhythm Menagerie and Rhythm Manipulations are designed to produce students who are excited about practicing rhythm and rhythm counting no matter what the counting method, I’m so excited that my new way of teaching kids to count will dovetail nicely with this reproducible curriculum.

Here’s some students of Diane Hidy’s using her own way of counting and having a blast:

Screen Shot 2014-01-18 at 3.50.06 PM

What are your thoughts about teaching kids about rhythm counting? How do you do it?

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14 thoughts on “Rhythm Counting: Ta, Ta, 1, 1, Walk, Walk, What?!”

  1. Hi 🙂

    As a Dalcroze teacher, I use the terms ‘walk’ ‘jogging’ ‘stride’ ‘running quickly’ etc. Students actually practise walking, striding, etc. to music and get used to identifying rhythm patterns by ear before learning to associate the sounds with the written notation. The idea is that, they remember how each note feels in the body. For longer notes there’s a sense of holding back, restraining the energy and balancing, whereas for quicker notes, the body needs to maintain a driving forward-motion.

    The difficulty here in England is that later, when preparing for official exams, the children have to learn ‘crotchet’, ‘minim’ etc, which is counter-productive and confusing! But, I find that if they’ve got a good association between the sound and symbol, that’s always the best way to start!

  2. Glad to see another piano teacher talking about this! After much research I myself now us the Gordon method (doo and doo da rather than ta and ti ti) I have attended multiple workshops with John Fieirabend in the last few years and he presents a very compelling case for the switch, including that the Gordon syllables are more like jazz scatting, and that the first syllable of the beat is always doo, so aurally it makes more sense as well. Just some thoughts! Thanks Wendy.

  3. Wendy, I so agree about the complexity and confusion of starting with measure counting, especially with young beginners.

    I start with (physically) walking a steady beat, then add clapping (all quarters) (no talking, just doing)

    Students can experience quarter, half, whole, dotted half and eighth note rhythms through clapping only, by copying the teacher (no naming anything yet).

    Next we can do all those rhythms again (but I usually start with just quarters and half notes) saying the name of the note value: ‘Quar-ter Quar-ter Quar-ter and Half – Note – Half – Note
    and so on.

    What I like about this system is that the student is saying the name of the note value, in its own rhythm, so they are learning the name as well as what it feels like.

    Eighth notes are easy, since the speaking of ‘Quar-ter’ and ‘Two Eighths’ is the same (you have to teach students to pronounce ‘quar-ter’ as two equally stressed syllables)

    I learned this way of counting in my pedagogy class with Mary Kogen at Portland State University (OR).

    That being said, I also ask students if they know any other ways of counting, and many of them know the Ta/Ti system from music classes at school. We just do them all.

    Before Rhythm Menagerie came along, my best resource was the rhythm activities in the Frances Clark Music Tree and Activities books, which encourage students to walk the beat while saying rhymes, walk the rhythm, while tapping and/or clapping and saying the words. I still think these are fabulous and students enjoy doing them. In the later books, some of the rhythms have other fun effects, like clicking, snapping fingers, etc, like Wendy uses in the RM and RM books.

  4. Those are more great ideas, Kathy! Thanks so much for explaining this in detail. I’ll have one more thing I can try for other students.

  5. Ah that’s true. It’s more like jazz so it should make the transition for some students easier. Thanks for sharing!

  6. I’m a former piano teacher who is currently teaching Elementary General Music and beginning Band in 4th & 5th Grade.

    This year I began having students write the fractions under the notes before I began teaching counting and I love it! Quarter notes = 1/4, half notes = 2/4, whole notes = 4/4, etc. Eighth notes are written as 1/8, but they’ve been learning about equivelent fractions in school so they know that 1/8 + 1/8 = 1/4 and this exercise reinforces that concept in a manner that they can feel, see, hear, and do (as opposed to coloring pizza slices). Students are learning about fractions in Math, so this is a perfect correlation.

    Each measure is an addition problem which must add up to the fraction in the time signature, so a 3/4 time signature measure can be 1/4 (quarter) + 3/8 (dotted quarter) + 1/8 (eighth) = 3/4. A 4/4 time signature can be 4/4 + 0 = 4/4; 3/4 + 1/4 = 4/4; 1/8 + 1/8 + 1/4 + 2/4 = 4/4; etc.

    I have the kids write the fractions under the notes. Then I tell the kids we’re counting numerators. After they understand this fundamental concept they catch on to traditional counting easily whether it be numerical or syllabic.

    This has revolutionized my students understanding of fractions and musical rhythmic notation!

  7. Wendy, thanks for this entry. I do agree that the transition from counting individual notes to counting measures can be difficult for some students. However, I am a big advocate of counting over all other rhythm methods, because I believe it is essential for my students to understand the numerical relationships between the notes. When I switch my students to measural counting I use a nifty little game to help: I have two sets of note cards – one with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and one with notes. I first ask them to make a rhythm with the notes – starting with a 4 beat rhythm. For the first, they might choose two quarters and a half note. I then ask them to place the numbers in the correct positions for our new way of counting. I ask guiding questions if they need help placing them correctly. Once the numbers are placed correctly, I have them clap the rhythm with the new counting. Then I repeat, lengthening the rhythm depending on their success with shorter ones (always in 4/4 to start). With this visual and tactile experience, some students can switch over to the new counting in just one lesson! For students that have more difficulty, I repeat this activity every week until the transition is made. It works very well. Eventually I wean them off of the number cards and have them count by measure without.

  8. Great idea Jennifer! Having a tactile game to demonstrate the transition would certainly help! Thanks so much for sharing this. I might try it when I switch from the ta system to the numeric which is what I use for older students.

  9. Yes its funny Joanna how we don’t take the time to tell students why it’s called a quarter note! Good idea to take some time to do the math with them!

  10. I saw a neat idea on one of the presentations in the online Music Educators Conference earlier this month. I can’t remember if it was Jennifer Foxx (Foxx Piano Studio) or Joy Morin (Color in my Piano) who showed it, but it was simple and brilliant.

    Take a paper plate and cut it into quarters. Now you have a whole note and four quarters than can be combined to make various rhythms. To make eighth notes, you cut one of the quarters into two — so students can see that two eighths take exactly the same time as one quarter.

    You can keep the plate assembled, or take it apart and lay out the quarters to make a line of rhythm. I love this!

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