<html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> On 5/11/2012 12:04 AM, Duaine Hechler wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:4FACB9F2.5050405@att.net" type="cite">I just don't think it is necessary to drive myself totally nuts, just to figure out which chord is beating faster or slower - and - counting the beats !!!!! </blockquote> I REALLY should step aside for this .... but, hope springs eternal. One does not "COUNT" the beats, except maybe as a theoretical exercise during the initial learning phase -- any more than a pianist "counts" sixty beats per minute when setting a tempo. ("45 - 46 - 47 ---- OOPS! Lost count and a minute isn't up yet!") A pianist has a rough idea of what one beat per second sounds like ("one thousand one", etc.) and that is plenty good enough. Musicians develop a canny sense of tempo, and know whether a particular piece is faster or slower than what they are used to. It's just a question of familiarity. One hears the approximate speed of the beating, and then compares different rates. For instance, is F3-D4 just slightly faster than F3 to A3? In the temperament I use, the only rate which I need to have approximately memorized is F3-A3, and that is just a starting point. All the rest is done by ratios. Each piano wants a slightly different F3-A3 and a slightly different increase going up the scale, anyhow. I haven't "counted beats" for 32 years. Susan (happy dinosaur) Kline </body> </html>