question: Why is it easy to keep a beat but it's difficult to count 'seconds' accurately in your head?
comment: As a musician, I find it harder to count seconds because my mind unconsciously takes into account the number of syllables in the second and I get thrown off balance. With beats it's just tik-tok-tik-tok-tik-tok or something similar, with seconds it goes ...five-six-***SEVEN***\-eight-nine-ten-***ELEVEN***\-twelve-***THIRTEEN***... then it goes haywire from there.
passages: Rhythms, too, are intentionally irregular and unpredictable. Details of the music are therefore "imprecise". On the whole, only general motions are heard—general speeds or changes of speeds—with abrupt breaks occurring even within these tendencies .
   Section::::Autonomic rhythms.
  
  The autonomic nervous system is responsible for many of the regulatory processes that sustain human life. Autonomic regulation is involuntary, meaning we do not have to think about it for it to take place. A great deal of these are dependent upon a certain rhythm, such as sleep, heart rate, and breathing.
  
  Section::::Autonomic rhythms.:Circadian rhythms.
   Section::::Imaging.
  
  Section::::Imaging.:Current methods.
  
  At the moment, recording methods are not capable of simultaneously measuring small and large areas at the same time, with the temporal resolution that the circuitry of the brain requires. These techniques include EEG, MEG, fMRI, optical recordings, and single-cell recordings.
  
  Section::::Imaging.:Future.
   Section::::Cognition.
  
  This refers to the types of rhythm that humans are able to generate, be it from recognition of others or sheer creativity.
  
  Section::::Cognition.:Sports.
   It has also been shown empirically that simple rhythms are often performed differently from how they are notated. This aspect of rhythm production is at odds with a feature of rhythm perception—namely, that rhythms made up of complex ratios are simplified by listeners to consist of simple ratios. For example, when presented with a sequence of sounds whose interonset intervals (IOIs) are 700 - 300 - 400 milliseconds (ratios of 7:3:4), a listener might code the rhythm according to the simpler ratios 2:1:1. This is known as quantizing.
   Musical performance usually involves at least three elementary motor control functions: timing, sequencing, and spatial organization of motor movements. Accuracy in timing of movements is related to musical rhythm. Rhythm, the pattern of temporal intervals within a musical measure or phrase, in turn creates the perception of stronger and weaker beats. Sequencing and spatial organization relate to the expression of individual notes on a musical instrument.
   In this way, with suitable metronome techniques, use of a metronome helps you to improve your sense of time and exact timing without causing any of the expected issues for musicality and expressive timing. The thing to bear in mind all the way through is that you use the metronome to help with exact timing – but that the sense of rhythm and musically expressive timing is something that comes from yourself. Rhythm is natural to human beings and pervades our lives, though you may need help to bring that rhythm into music. As Andrew Lewis says in his book:
   Section::::Cognition.:Music.
   Section::::Terminology.:Alternation and repetition.
  
  Rhythm is marked by the regulated succession of opposite elements, the dynamics of the strong and weak beat, the played beat and the inaudible but implied rest beat, the long and short note. As well as perceiving rhythm humans must be able to anticipate it. This depends on repetition of a pattern that is short enough to memorize.
   Modern metronome technique addresses the issues of expressive musical rhythms in many ways. For instance, much of the focus of modern metronome technique is on encouraging and developing a good sense of tempo and timing in your playing, and in your mind. So you may work with the metronome in separate exercises to achieve this. When you have a more precise sense of the passage of time, you can then choose for yourself how to use this in your musical performance. You still play in a musically expressive fashion with continually changing tempo and beat; the only difference is that as a result of your work on precision of timing with use of a metronome, you are more aware of what you are doing..
   Section::::Computational models.:Macaque motor cortex.
   Breaths or pauses are expressed through a larger or smaller movement in space, giving new impulse to what follows. Beat is conveyed through greater emphasis of downbeats, or those beats upon which stress is normally placed. Beat is generally treated as a subsidiary element. Eurythmy has only occasionally been done to popular music, in which beat plays a large role.
   There is evidence indicating that rhythm is highly sensitive to competing motor production. Actions such as paced finger tapping can have an effect on recall as the disruptive impact of paced finger tapping, but lack of consistent effect of paced irrelevant sound, is indicative of motor feedback from the tapping task disrupting rehearsal and storage.
  
  Seven different effects are generally seen in serial recall studies with humans:
  
  BULLET::::- 1. List length effect: Ability to serial recall decreases as the length of the list or sequence increases.
   This issue is part of the broader tempo/skill/action-slip fallacy, which concerns the relationship between tempo, skill and the level of action slips (performance errors). The fallacy is that it is possible to reliably compare the eye movement patterns of skilled and unskilled performers under the same conditions.
  
  Section::::Musical complexity.
   BULLET::::5. Syllable Count shows several phrases, one after the other, on the top screen, and the player must write the number of syllables in each phrase on the touch screen.
   In Speed Counting, which requires speaking but does not use the microphone, the player counts up from one to 120 as fast as they can without slurring the names of numbers.
   Section::::Autonomic rhythms.:Respiration.
   The establishment of a basic beat requires the perception of a regular sequence of distinct short-duration pulses and, as a subjective perception of loudness is relative to background noise levels, a pulse must decay to silence before the next occurs if it is to be really distinct. For this reason, the fast-transient sounds of percussion instruments lend themselves to the definition of rhythm. Musical cultures that rely upon such instruments may develop multi-layered polyrhythm and simultaneous rhythms in more than one time signature, called polymeter. Such are the cross-rhythms of Sub-Saharan Africa and the interlocking "kotekan" rhythms of the "gamelan".
   The belt and parabelt areas of the right hemisphere are involved in processing rhythm. Rhythm is a strong repeated pattern of movement or sound. When individuals are preparing to tap out a rhythm of regular intervals (1:2 or 1:3) the left frontal cortex, left parietal cortex, and right cerebellum are all activated. With more difficult rhythms such as a 1:2.5, more areas in the cerebral cortex and cerebellum are involved. EEG recordings have also shown a relationship between brain electrical activity and rhythm perception. Snyder and Large (2005) performed a study examining rhythm perception in human subjects, finding that activity in the gamma band (20 – 60 Hz) corresponds to the beats in a simple rhythm. Two types of gamma activity were found by Snyder & Large: induced gamma activity, and evoked gamma activity. Evoked gamma activity was found after the onset of each tone in the rhythm; this activity was found to be phase-locked (peaks and troughs were directly related to the exact onset of the tone) and did not appear when a gap (missed beat) was present in the rhythm. Induced gamma activity, which was not found to be phase-locked, was also found to correspond with each beat. However, induced gamma activity did not subside when a gap was present in the rhythm, indicating that induced gamma activity may possibly serve as a sort of internal metronome independent of auditory input. The motor and auditory areas are located in the cerebrum of the brain. The motor area processes the rhythm of the music (Dean, 2013). The motor area of the brain is located in the parietal lobe. The parietal lobe also deals with orientation, recognition, and perception.
   Section::::Autonomic rhythms.:Central pattern generation.
   This steadiness and precision you can develop and encourage through metronome technique does no harm to musical expression in timing and rhythm; indeed one of the motivations is to help with nuances of timing and tempo. An analogy with art may help. It's like Giotto's circle, or Apelles' straight line, if you can play a perfectly steady and precise beat, it helps with nuances of timing., It doesn't mean that you can only play perfectly steady beats, just as Giotto or Apelles impressive displays of technique didn't mean that they could only draw circles and straight lines. 
   An exact sense of the passage of time doesn't come to humans so naturally (sometimes time may seem to pass quickly and sometimes more slowly) and that's where the metronome can help most. That's how the teachers of metronome technique referenced here think of the tool – as a way to increase your sensitivity to musical time, and develop greater precision of timing and a clearer sense of the passage of musical time – relative to which musicians can then use expressive, natural and fluid rhythms, with as much rubato and tempo variance as they wish for.
   BULLET::::3. Rhythm of presentation: Closely related to the problem of presenting the stimuli in groups, is the presentation of the stimuli in rhythmic fashion. Most investigators point out that the stimuli used in testing memory span should be presented with as little rhythm as possible. The effect of rhythm is to group the units in the series, again enabling the individual to secure a span higher than his "true" one.
   Many exercises are used to help with precision of timing and sensitivity to time, also independence, to make sure you don't become too dependent to the metronome. These exercises include:
  
  BULLET::::- Set the metronome to go silent for a number of measures, and see if you are still in time when it comes back on again
  
  BULLET::::- Set it to go silent for increasingly longer time periods and see if you are still in time
  
  BULLET::::- Play through music in your mind's ear, and try to do keep in time with the metronome as you do so
   Exercise and music
  
  The interplay of exercise and music have been long-discussed, crossing the disciplines of biomechanics, neurology, physiology, and sport psychology. People "automatically feel the beat" of the music they listen to and instinctively adjust their walking pace and heart rate to the tempo of the music
  