Counting
Even when there is no drummer playing, every piece of music has its own rhythm and its own tempo, a musical word that describes the speed at which a piece is played. When an ensemble of musicians is playing without a drummer, all of the musicians know and are in agreement about what the rhythm and the tempo of the piece will be. In the same way, when you're playing a piece of music by yourself you'll need to have the rhythm and the tempo of the music in mind to play it with the right feel.
There are hundreds of annual harmonica festivals around the United States and around the world every year, where players and enthusiasts meet to revel in the instrument. These include the Spring Harmonica Festival in San Diego, California, the Buckeye Harmonica Festival in Columbus, Ohio, and the Atlantic Canada Harmonica Festival in Nova Scotia.
The beat of a song defines its rhythm and pace. It's the centerpiece of the music, around which everything else is built. The beat of a piece of music usually refers to the pulse of the note that gets one beat in the time signature that the piece is in — more on time signatures in the following section.
Before a band begins a song you'll often hear the bandleader or the drummer “count off” the time by saying “1-2-3-4” or something similar — this count is delivered at the exact speed the song will be played at, and this alerts all the other musicians about what pace they'll be playing and also what the length of one measure is.
Besides counting the beats of a measure, when you're first learning about chord progressions you might find yourself having to count the measures, or bars, themselves as they go by to keep track of where you are. A chord progression is the series of chords that are played to accompany the melody of a song. For example, a very common chord progression in blues is the 12-bar blues progression, also called a “12-bar blues.” Just like it sounds, a 12-bar blues takes 12 measures to play through the entire chord progression one time. If you're trying to count measures in a progression, the way to do it is to replace the “1” of the 1-2-3-4 beat count in each measure with the measure number instead, which would look like this for a 12-bar blues:
In the beginning, when you're just learning about rhythm and beats, you may find yourself spending a lot of time counting in your head — or even out loud — while you're playing to make sure you know where you are in the measure or in the chord progression. But as time goes by and you start to feel rhythm, beats, and progressions naturally you'll find that you don't have to count anymore because you'll know where you are by feel alone.
