I’m gonna do my best to explain what I mean here. I’m not a musician, but I love listening to classical music. As I’m listening, sometimes I count along with the beats in my head or pretend to conduct the music. It’s always really clear which beat is the downbeat, even with a solo instrument and even if you don’t start the piece from the beginning, but I don’t understand why? What stops you counting the from the 3rd beat instead of the first?
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I usually just try to listen to a phrase. Those usually start at the beginning of a bar, so you can use that as a starting point.
It’s not that simple all the time though. Take the main theme from the first movement of Beethovens 5th for example, the one that everyone knows. If you start counting at the first note, you quickly realize that something feels wrong. So you have to figure out how many notes there are used as a starting phrase, which for this phrase is the first three. You can just count 4 to the beginning of the next phrase iteration then.
This of course works best for classical, baroque and romantic music up until the more modern music. You can still try to use it for Schönberg, Strawinsky and Shostakovich, it just won’t be as simple anymore. In the end it’s also a matter of practice, of course.
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