> You can somehow feel a beat
If you play in an orchestra, you might have the visual memory of the conductor and their time signature motions helping you along.
The somewhat jarring tick tock of a digital metronome can also be encoded into a sort of background track that plays more or less automatically in your head.
> If you play in an orchestra, you might have the visual memory of the conductor and their time signature motions helping you along.
Or on the other side of the spectrum, most DJs learn to "feel" beat counting and phrases, more or less by feeling. After a while, your head kind of goes "1,2,3,4" by itself, and the phrases of the songs "feels" like they're about to come, then they come.