There’re usually two ways to resolve a problem.

One, you try to read up on it. Somewhere, someone has probably had the same problem and would have tried to share his solution.

Two, you look for examples of actual applications. So if it’s a plumbing problem, you watch a plumber fix the problem.

Many years ago, I had some unanswered questions about playing themes and variations.

I had read or heard someone say to the effect that when playing a theme and variations, that you would want to keep the tempo in all the variations the same.

So I went around asking teachers and friends and got a different answer from each one.

Finally, I realized all I needed to do was to listen to the great players play some theme and variations and the answer would be revealed in their playing.

I have applied that same approach to many other problems and it’s always worked.

For example, I was a little perplexed with the fugue from Bach’s 998, especially the tertial appoggiatura sections.

So I went to the 48, and I found a fugue with a similar texture and listened to as many players as I could playing it and yes, I got my answer.

Back to the point at hand.

When it comes to linear phrasing, if you have any doubts or need more confirmation, the best thing to do is to listen to piano players.

One of my favorite pianists is Artur Schnabel.

Schnabel was a student of the famous Theodor Leschetizky, who was a student of Carl Czerny, who was a student of Beethoven.

The great thing about listening to Schnabel is that there’s a book dedicated to his teaching by Konrad Wolff so you could actually read up on the principles and rationales behind his playing.

You could take any recording of Schnabel to listen for linear phrasing, but here’s my favorite—the Tempest.

Be forewarned that the rhythmic effects are very subtle.

You’ll have to conduct to his playing to understand and recognize them.,

Listen to how he manipulates the pulse to get the effect he wants. There’s a basic pulse, but he’s always either pushing this pulse or holding it back, again for specific effects.

This pushing forward or holding back is at the core of linear phrasing. If you play metrically, you would not be able to have this freedom.

Many teachers teach phrasing in terms of dynamic levels.

Their standard dynamic model of a phrase is that of an arch like shape with a peak at the high point of the phrase.

To me, that’s focusing on the effect rather than the underlying process.

And that process is energy.

Every phrase is a burst of energy and the art of phrasing is in how we control this energy and how we resolve it.

So instead of thinking in terms of loud or soft, think in terms of energy and release of energy.

Because musical phrases are mostly derived from speech patterns, phrasing is closely aligned with our breathing.

There’re two distinct phases in breathing.

When we inhale, that’s the effort phase, and when we exhale, that’s the release phase.

In the same way, every phrase has two phases, the effort phase and the release phase.

As we initiate a phrase, we exert energy which results in a natural swell in dynamic level. This dynamic level rises as we drive the phrase forward to peak at the high point of the phrase.

And then on the other side of the high point, we release all that energy which results in a natural fall in dynamic level.

So yes, there is a rise and fall in dynamics when we phrase, but that rise and fall is a result of the rise and fall in energy level, and not a goal in itself.

The important thing to note is that the resolution phase should be a complete letting go.

Just as there’s no effort in exhalation, there should be no effort in the resolution of the phrase.

Think of rolling some round object up an incline and then letting it roll down the other side.

There’s no effort involved in the rolling down of that object down that incline.

This is perhaps the biggest lesson I learned from Leo Brouwer.

When he plays, there’s always a clear distinction between the effort phase of the phrase and the resolution.

You never hear him pushing through a resolution.

The endings of his phrases are always played exquisitely and effortlessly.

Other instrumentalists do this too but there’s nothing quite like hearing someone do it on the actual instrument you play.

I discovered Leo Brouwer’s playing in 1978 and I have been a fan ever since.

What is so special about Brouwer’s playing?

It’s his sense of rhythm and timing.

One of the things that differentiates piano players from guitar players is their sense of timing.

If you listen to any great pianist, you’ll find that they almost never play on the beat.

This is the one thing that sets them apart in terms of their artistry.

And if you listen to guitar players, one of the things you’ll notice is that they almost always play on the beat.

Except for Leo Brouwer.

Listen to this performance. As you listen, try to conduct to his rhythm and you’ll find that he almost never plays on the beat. He is either holding back or pushing the beat.

Why is this kind of playing so special?

Because rhythm and timing is the key to expression in music.

It comes down to one basic principle.

If you want to create tension and movement, play with the audience’s expectations.

To create tension, do not play when they expect the notes to be played, instead, hold back just a little.

That slight holding back produces tension in the listener because it is not what they’re expecting.

In passages that require extreme tension, hold back the tempo and then push it to create what I call the ‘jagged rhythmic effect.’

This is a standard pianistic device.

Listen to Horowitz or Rubinstein or Schnabel play those thunderous fortississimo passages in romantic repertoire and you’ll notice they never play right on the beat or subdivisions.

I became aware of this effect years ago when listening to Glenn Gould’s harpsichord recordings of the Handel suites.

His rhythm in those recordings is extremely subtle. You’ll have to try to conduct to them to appreciate the subtlety.

He explains the concept in his interviews with Jonathan Cott and calls it using ‘rhythm in lieu of dynamics.’

In other words, due to the limited dynamic possibilities on the harpsichord, he had to resort to using rhythm to create dynamic effects.

Along the same lines, when a passage is soft and delicate, and you want to produce an easy languid feel, keep the pulse simple—don’t do anything special with it.

So the principle is, to create tension and suspense, play with unpredictable jagged rhythms.

And in soft expressive passages, keep the rhythm simple and play predictably and lightly on the beat.

All these expressive devices hinge on one thing—linear phrasing.

Linear phrasing frees you up and allows you to manipulate the pulse any way you choose to create any expressive effect you’re trying to achieve.

The most important element of linear phrasing is the pulse. Whatever you do to the rhythm, never lose sight of the pulse.

One advantage piano players have over guitar players is the left hand.

The left hand in piano playing is the time keeper.

When you have a steady time keeper in the left hand, it’s very hard to lose sight of the pulse.

But on the guitar we do not have the left hand so there’s a tendency to forget the pulse and start to overdo our rubatos.

Segovia is a good example of this.

In his early recordings, the maestro’s pulse is impeccable. You always know where the beat is.

But in his later recordings, for whatever reason, he started exaggerating his rubatos to the point where the pulse is gone.

When it comes to linear phrasing on the guitar, the great master is Leo Brouwer.

Every one of his recordings is a gem, but my favorite is his debut recording for Deutsche Grammaphon.

Unfortunately, the recording has never been reissued although if you google hard enough, you might be able to find mp3’s of it floating around.

On one side of the album, he played Sanz, Narvaez, and Sor.

The Sanz and Narvaez are not only studies in elegant linear phrasing but also in structural delineation. The latter has to do with articulating the form which I will cover later.

The five Sor minuets at the end of the side are absolutely amazing—the imagination that goes into the phrasing, articulation and technique are unique among guitar players.

Back to the left hand.

Because we lack the left hand to keep the pulse for us, guitar players have to work harder in internalizing the pulse.

When you start working on linear phrasing, it’s very important to tap your foot as you play. The foot becomes your ‘left hand.’

Always know where the beat is as you play.

When you speed up or slow down, let the foot do it for you and follow its beat.

There’s a lot of freedom in linear phrasing but let the foot guide you so you don’t overdo it and start distorting the rhythm.

One of the reasons people play metrically and are afraid to loosen the pulse is because they look at the musical notation and all they see are identical looking black and white noteheads.

And they think that when they play, they have to reproduce those black and white symbols strictly.

This is a failure of understanding.

First, the notes on the page is not the music. It’s an attempt by the composer to represent the sonic imagination in his head.

It’s like a blueprint to a house. The blueprint is not the house.

Or it’s like a screenplay to a movie. In order for the movie to come alive, the director has to flesh out all the scenes, actions etc.

The score is dead, it’s just a basic blueprint.

When we play it, we have to breathe life into the dead score, by filling it with our imagination, with many gestures, nuances, and flourishes.

And linear phrasing is one of the ways to bring it to life.

When we play linearly, we’re focusing on the line, on the forward motion in the music, not on each individual note or beat.

Instead of focusing on the notes and beats, we build beautiful lines, we turn each phrase into gestures and sonic events so that they come together to form a beautiful work of art.

So we are past the point of just trying to play the notes ‘faithfully.’

We’re active participants in the creative process—we’re co-creators with the composer.

A piece of music on the written page is just a bunch of black and white symbols.

When we play it, we have a duty to make it come alive, to make it sing and dance, just as a director has a duty to make the movie come alive.

This is what is meant by interpretation.

So the next question is, how do we know how to make it come alive?

The answer is simple. You have to immerse yourself in the style of whatever music you’re trying to play.

You’ll have to know all its conventions, the theory behind it, the forms, you’ll have to know the aesthetics, its philosophical groundings. In other words, you have to breathe and live it.

That’s why learning to play classical music is a life time pursuit, and not just something you pick up one day and decide you know everything about it.

The main difference between piano players and guitar players is in their phrasing—piano players tend to phrase linearly and guitar players tend to phrase metrically.

This wasn’t always the case.

If you listen to Agustin Barrios, his phrasing is linear. The same is true of Llobet and his student, Maria Luisa Anido. So also is Segovia’s phrasing.

The transformation to metrical phrasing occurred, I believe, because of the influence of pop and rock music.

Most modern guitar players came to classical music through popular and rock guitar. (I know, I count myself among them.)

In other words, they started playing the guitar by playing pop and rock music and pop music especially rock music is all about the beat.

This early influence with its emphasis on the beat was so strong, they carried it into their classical playing.

But what’s wrong with metrical phrasing?

Isn’t it just a matter of musical taste and preference?

As one of my students asked one day, ‘Sir, why do we need to listen to piano players? We’re not playing the piano, we’re playing guitar.’

The answer lies in musicianship and musicality—it’s not about piano players, it’s about musicality.

Consider a folk musician, maybe an Irish folk musician playing classical music, maybe the music of Chopin.

The beat in Irish folk music is strong, can you imagine that strong beat in a Chopin Nocturne?

Or perhaps even in a Bach piece like the famous Toccata?

Now, substitute the words Irish folk with pop and rock.

Classical music is highly refined art music. There’s a great deal of rhythmic subtleties and nuances, especially in the music from the Romantic period.

And the art of a great classical artist lies in his/her ability to penetrate into these subtleties and nuances and bring out their poetry.

That’s why in the piano world, they’re so hung up on this artist being a great Chopin player or that artist being a great Beethoven player.

When I first started listening to piano players, they all sounded the same to me and I was always a little perplexed when my piano friends would say, ‘Oh that Claudio Arrau, he’s so old-fashioned or, Barenboim, he can’t play Chopin, he’s too stiff etc.’

But the more I listened, the more I began too to appreciate the subtle difference between the players.

I found myself gravitating to Dinu Lipatti who has an exquisite rhythmic touch. And Alfred Brendel who was my piano teacher Margaret Nielsen’s favorite pianist.

And Glenn Gould who was a bit of an iconoclast but who was still thoroughly grounded in the traditions of Artur Schnabel.

And of course Martha Argerich, the student of the so-called old-fashioned Claudio Arrau.

Once I began to appreciate the incredible fluidity and subtlety of linear phrasing, metrical phrasing sounds rigid and folksy in comparison, and inadequate to the musical aesthetics of classical music.

The third step is to understand how linear phrasing works and apply the elements consciously.

The most important element of linear phrasing is that it frees you from the metronomic beat.

You are free to stretch or contract the time to express whatever you wish to express.

You are free to linger on an important note and speed up other notes, all within the context of the subdivisions, again to achieve any effect you want

Here is my recording of Giuliani’s study in e minor.

The finger work is fast but because of linear phrasing, it doesn’t sound fast.

In fact, it’s basically a study based on how to create an illusion of a thick orchestral texture with fast moving filigree work.

The speed is essential to create that illusion but it’s not a speed study.

There’re many subtle rubatos in the playing but they’re all based on a strong rhythmic structure with clear control of the subdivisions.

In general, there’s a lot of freedom at the beginning of phrases, there’s usually a tightening up in the middle and then a loosening again at the end.

In the middle, that’s where the forward motion is strongest so you would need to push it through.

I have heard many attempts to play this same study but they tend to sound rushed and breathless.

That’s because the playing tend to be too metrical. The slavery to the metronomic beat makes the player afraid to take any time with the notes.

This is misunderstanding the work.

The study is basically a slow piece with a series of chords that have been arpeggiated, to create, as I mentioned, an illusion of an orchestral texture.

Once you have developed a strong rhythmic sense (we also call that internal time), the next step is to enter into a new musical consciousness.

This new musical consciousness is based on the line as opposed to the beat, the horizontal element as opposed to the vertical.

Yes, you always have the underlying beat but it stays in the background.

To develop this new musical consciousness, first, focus on the line, on the forward motion, the horizontal element.

Don’t put any emphasis on each beat. The beats are already strong. You do not need to make them stronger.

Everything you play, every melody, focus on the line, on making the notes in the line move from one to the next, on creating a strong sense of forward motion.

And underemphasize the beats.

Next, listen to good pianists to hear how it’s done in real life.

I recommend Alicia de Larrocha, especially her early recordings on Vox/Turnabout of Albeniz and Granados.

De Larrocha is ideal because you can compare her playing of the same works (which we play on the guitar) with guitar players to hear the differences in approach.

But any pianist is good because all pianists play linearly. Even piano students, I’ve found, have a natural inclination towards linear phrasing.

(There’s a reason for this which I’ll cover in a later article.)

As I’ve mentioned, Sevilla is a good piece to compare differences in approach.

Guitarists tend to play it with a strong emphasis on each beat—chomp chomp chomp.

Because they have established such a strong beat, when they reach the high G note, they’re so afraid to take time, they invariably rush that note.

With linear phrasing, you’ll find you have a lot of time to hold on to that note. (I’ll demonstrate how this is done later).

The only guitarist who plays Sevilla with linear phrasing is Barrueco and I’ve always believed that he learned it from de Larrocha.

In fact, I read in a Guitar Player interview with Jose Tomas, that he could hear Frank Marshall’s influence in Barrueco’s playing. Frank Marshall of course was de Larrocha’s teacher.

So two things.

First, deemphasize the beat in your playing and focus on the line.

Second, listen to good pianists and absorb their phrasing.

This has to be done over a long period of time. It has to be so completely absorbed you begin to hear everything with that same fluid linear phrasing.