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.

The first step to linear phrasing is to develop a strong rhythmic sense based on the subdivisions in every beat.

Why is it important to feel the subdivisions?

Because when you accelerate or retard, the subdivisions will prevent you from doing sudden accelerandos or ritardandos.

This is important to note.

When you do rubatos, you should always do it in reference to a beat. In other words, the beat should always be in the background.

As you accelerate, the pulse should increase proportionately and organically in relation to the beat.

I have written about this before but a short recap.

Think of rhythm as something that exists outside of us. We have no control over it.

What we feel as rhythm is just our response to this external rhythm which we might call universal rhythm.

Imagine you are driving on a highway.

On one side of the highway are telephone poles (slightly outdated analogy).

Imagine that as you drive past each pole, you could hear an audible click.

When you speed up, the clicks will occur faster, when you slow down, they will occur slower.

The distance between the poles hasn’t changed. What had changed is your speed. Our driving speed is our response to the universal rhythm represented by the telephone poles.

We can use the same analogy to explain how to do natural organic rubatos.

Rubatos should always occur naturally and organically, never suddenly.

A piano teacher once told me to imagine a train pulling out of or into a station.

When a train slows down or speeds up, it doesn’t do it suddenly; it does it gradually and organically.

That is the basic principle behind any rubatos.

How do you develop a strong sense of subdivisions?

You practice them by externalizing them. The best way is to tongue each subdivision and make your playing follow those subdivisions.

This is the concept of establishing an independent source of rhythm and making your playing follow that rhythmic source.

As opposed to just letting your playing produce the rhythm for you.

All this is hard to explain in words so I will be posting a series of videos to explain all these concepts.

So the first step towards linear phrasing is to develop a precise rhythmic sense based on the subdivisions.

This may take time and a lot of patience.

For many years, I was stuck with a conundrum—how do you make a melody sing and keep time at the same time?

I remember playing a concert in Palais Wittgenstein in Dusseldorf in 1981, and the critic commented that I was stronger in the modern pieces, and that my Sor Op.22 lacked swing and showed a lack of understanding of the style.

For years, I wondered about what he meant.

Yes, modern works are easier to interpret because the beat is not such a strong feature, unlike the music of Bach and Sor where the beat is strong.

At the time, I didn’t know how to loosen up my phrasing without losing the pulse.

I finally found the answer in 1992 when I started recording my Bach album.

I started recording in February of that year. I thought I was going to be done in a few days. Little did I know how wrong I was.

When I played back the recordings of those early sessions, they sounded awful and not at all what I expected. They were very stiff and yes, lacking in swing again.

I kept on recording that spring semester but they did not get any better.

That summer, I practiced everyday with my Sony walkman, and I practiced with the recordings of Alicia de Larrocha and Alfred Brendel.

Every day, I sang (or grunted) into my walkman and at the end of summer, I finally had the breakthrough I had been waiting for with Nun Komm.

I suddenly found my phrasing loosening up and free to express itself.

I was no longer a slave to the beat. Instead, the beat was always in the background, supporting but not overwhelming the melody.

I knew I had found the answer. I re practiced the pieces all over again and in November of that year, finally felt happy with the recordings to get them ready for release.

I decided to call the concept ‘linear phrasing’ and I have been teaching it to my advanced students since then.

What is linear phrasing?

It is phrasing focused on the line as opposed to the beat, which I call metrical phrasing.

Guitarists tend to play metrically and pianists linearly.

To hear the difference between the two approaches, take any guitar and piano recordings of the same piece, let’s say Sevilla, and you’ll notice the difference.

There’re several steps to mastering linear phrasing and I will cover them in the few articles.

It’s easy to get obsessed with speed.

We would chase after this fad or that fad, practice this exercise or that exercise, believing it will get us to speed heaven.

But speed is a direct outcome of good technique and fundamentals.

If you have strong fundamentals, speed will naturally result.

For instance;

If you’re light, you can move faster.

If you have less to do, you can get it done quicker.

If you have less distance to cover, you can get there faster.

Take care of your fundamentals and speed will take care of itself.

—2009