Eli5 – Why does music come in bars of four instead of 5/10?

Question

Recently I’ve been attending a lot of gym classes and the counts are always 4, 8, 16 etc. It made me wonder why music is set out this way and not in 5’s and 10’s like I would expect. Or am I missing something obvious?

In: 23

Answer 1

It depends on the type of music. Most pop songs are 4/4 but listen to some waltz and its 3/4. That famous jazz song Take five by Dave Brubeck is 5/4 while many other jazz songs are 4/4. Like someone else said your gym most likely has pop music playing which is 4/4 therefore they used the beat to count.