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Comment by bongodongobob | Hacker News Reader

The numbers are irrelevant for counting time though. It could just as well be A B C D rather than 1 2 3 4. In fact, tabla drummers use words/syllables instead of "counting". Counting measures is completely different as in that case, you're actually measuring something. Counting time is more declarative than measuring imo. Especially when you consider notes between the beats. It's not 1.75, its one-e-and. It's not 2.5, it's 2-and.

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If you change 1,2,3,4 into A,B,C,D - you're still counting. You're just using different symbols to do it.

Take a moment longer to think about it and you realize that 1,2,3,4 are also just symbols - potentially raw counting does not require these symbols at all.

So ABCD is unlikely to make life easier for the subject of this story.

We are in agreement then. I'm not saying it would make things easier, it's just convention. Being a lifelong musician, I will admit that it's so internalized in me, I never have to count or even think about numbers in any way, unless I'm counting some foreign complicated time signature. Honestly I think the tabla guys got it right with their syllabic mnemonics.

if you've ever seen some of the videos from Drumeo on YT, you'll see them all pretty much counting the number of beats to a measure, and then trying to count phrases. It's fun when they're screwing with them by giving them something from II or Danny Carey or Dream Theater (hangs head in shame for forgetting his name). Even the Dream Theater guy struggles with Pneuma.

I've never been taught drums, but other instruments and we all learn to count 8th notes as one-and with 16th as one-e-and-a. This isn't specific to drummers at all.

I never said this was specific to drummers. Again, yes they count using numbers, but that's just convention. Unless you're counting crazy composite time signatures like 17/8 or some shit, the numbers are meaningless in the context of a single measure. For 99.9% of popular music using 3-6 beats, it could just as easily be letters or colors or something. Numbers are sufficient but not necessary.

There’s a reason it’s done the way it is. For one, the names of the notes are letters, so using numbers makes it easy to differentiate notes from beats. Time signatures are also numerically noted. So trying to say using A/B time makes absolutely no sense. Trying to promote using numbers is arbitrary is nonsensical.

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