Most of western music is built around a 4/4 meter. I can't speak that much to Eastern music — as much as I have listened to it, I know that I'm only scratching the surface. For most of us, 4/4 time is deeply ingrained into our psyche. Turn on the radio and listen to almost any song. Find the beat and count it; there will almost certainly be four beats in between the first emphasized beat you hear and the equally emphasized beat.

Still, not all music is in 4/4. Waltzes are traditionally in 3/4 time (think of the Blue Danube from the scene in 2001 when the shuttle docks with the space station), flamenco is traditionally in 12/8 and Celtic music leans towards 7/8. And, of course, in American jazz, any time signature is up for grabs.

Counting out the meter can be an exercise all in itself. Speaking for myself, I don't like to count in my head much past five. Once I go past five, I break the count down into smaller numbers that add up the way I want. For example, a song in 11/8 might be counted as 4-4-3 (1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3), 4-3-4, 3-4-4, 3-3-3-2, 4-2-3-2 or any other of the various pernumerations that would still produce 11.

The break down is important because it changes the way in which I approach the music. Playing 11/8 as 4-4-3 makes the song feel like a 4/4 groove with a truncated third measure. Playing it as 3-3-3-2 brings a strong triplet feel to the tune. And 3-4-4 takes the 4/4 groove and keeps it off balance from the outset.

Once the tempo and the feel have been decided and all the musicians are on the same page (or all in agreeance about the individual pages they are all on), the music can take shape. While it is possible for a song to be coherent with each musician playing a different meter (I can recall a jazz composition from years ago that had the drummer in 3/4, the bass line in 4/4, the keys in 5/4 and the guitar in 7/4, but that's far and away the exception), in most circumstances, everyone starts and ends in the same frame of time. Each segment of the song needs to have at least one instrument holding down the tempo so the rest of the musicians can key off of that part. More often than not, it's the drummer that everyone else uses as their reference point, but this is not always the case. When the drummer's not holding down the fort, the role almost always falls to the bass line. But, most of the time, the drummer hold keeps time for the entire group throughout the entire song.