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?
In: Other
Because generally the tonic (root note) which is the (home base) of the song, is on beat one. Your brain recognizes that as the “starting point” and goes from there. If you did something weird where you played the last chord in a phrase longer and didn’t switch back to the tonic until, say, beat 3 of the next measure, it might confuse you as to where beat one is and you might think that is in fact beat 1. Also, knowing that there are (in common time) 4 beats per measure and that it has to start somewhere, your brain can figure that out pretty easily. You just *feel* it, mostly because western music all follows the same conventions that have been ingrained into you from birth and your brain recognizes them pretty easily. Our brains excel at recognizing patterns, and music is all about patterns.
Latest Answers