Is counting to 8 instead of 4 in your beat counting wrong?

Personal pref. I do 8 counts as well.

It doesn’t really matter as one day you will stop counting and just listen for cues in the track, then you will start to intuitively know when to mix.

I prefer counting in groups of 4, the reason begin that structure of most music is focussed around that:

4 beats to a bar
4 bars to a ‘group’ (of you need to match these 4 bar groups as well to get a logical transition from one song to the next)
quite often 4 of these 4-bar-groups will be the length of an intro, verse or break within a song.

Ofcourse, you could always count to 8 and make ‘groups’ of 2×8 beats instead of 4×4

For everyone who says it’s all instinct: yes after a while you will do the above more or less automatically, but I find it easier to know the theory when trying to develop my instincts. Furthermore counting the beats out still helps me when setting cue points in songs which lack a distinct beat or melody in their intro’s.

I count to 4 x 4 times since in trance music something different always happens on 16 beats. 🙂 I’d love to also get credit for proper music instruction (that I did have at a young age) but I honestly just do it because I noticed the trance pattern.

do you do it drummer style?

1 – E – & – A – 2 – E – & – A -[COLOR=#c0c0c0] 3 – E – & – A – 4 – E – & – A[/COLOR]

Or count to 8?

From a Technical standpoint you should be counting in 4s…since it is a 4 x 4 beat pattern you should go by what is proper.

Realistically…i dont even count anymore and can tell when the end of a 32 beat phrase is.

Hee Won Jung, post: 25280, member: 948 wrote: From a Technical standpoint you should be counting in 4s…since it is a 4 x 4 beat pattern you should go by what is proper.

Realistically…i dont even count anymore and can tell when the end of a 32 beat phrase is.

The music in my collection that I REALLY know I don’t conciously count, but I still count on newer tracks. It allows me to mix music that I don’t know all that well.

Counting also helps me get back in the mix after someone comes into the booth and distracts me.

Nicko D., post: 25236, member: 2782 wrote: I count to 4 x 4 times since in trance music something different always happens on 16 beats. 🙂 I’d love to also get credit for proper music instruction (that I did have at a young age) but I honestly just do it because I noticed the trance pattern.

In trance it’s usually 32.