John Coltrane's Tone Circle

> Thelonious Monk once said “All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians“.

I haven’t heard that one. I think I prefer this one, attributed to Leibniz:

“Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.”

On the bandstand, there's usually a ton of highly aware counting going on. 24 bars of rest! followed by 8 bars of rest! and then 16 bars of latin feel! now back to 8 of swing!

On top of that there is definitely some feel and intuition going on. But for a band to play non-trivial music, everyone is counting unless they know the material cold, and even then they are probably counting at times.

Indeed, as a long time fan of prog metal and tech death I'm quite aware of the importance of counting (and the existence of people whose counting abilities far surpass my own)!

But I think the quote is also referring to casual enjoyment of music where the counting might not be deliberate.