When reading music, counting becomes a very important tool to help keep your choir or band in sync.

One of the most commonly taught ways is called the Kodaly system.

By this point, we know that a whole note gets 4 beats, a half note gets 2, a quarter gets 1, and an eighth gets 1/2 of a beat.

The Kodaly Counting system uses very simple, one syllable words to symbolize these note values when counting through a piece. Take for example, the whole note.

When looking at a whole note, most elementary teachers would denote it as TOH (TOE), which would be held 4 beats. However, for the purpose of this book let us look at the half, quarter, and eighth notes.

Look at the Quarter note. In Kodaly, this note would be seen as the word TA. So if you had 4 quarter notes strung together, that would be TA, TA, TA, TA.

TA