Counting The Beat started as a songbook for someone learning guitar, fifty songs and details about when and who wrote them, a few from each decade, something about popular music and composing, some first steps in the land of Tex Morton, Now Is The Hour or Dominion Road, rather than Yankee Doodle and Men Of Harlech. By the last page a century or so later a touch of history rubs off along with the soundtrack.

Counting The Beat places lyrics and guitar chords for fifty songs alongside copious research and more than fifty interviews from international composers Tim Finn [Split Enz] and Neil Finn [Crowded House], Dave Dobbyn and Chris Knox to local legends Sam Freedman and Garner Wayne.

The New Zealand-composed songs zigzag from the international classics Now Is The Hour [Gracie Fields], Blue Smoke [Dean Martin], Love In A Fowlhouse [Hank Snow], Weather With You [Crowded House] to Australasian legends She's A Mod, April Sun In Cuba, Counting The Beat, and the little-known Won't Ya Be My Baby by 1950s rocker Johnny Devlin ---with finishing touches credited to Paul McCartney backstage during the Beatles tour of Australia.