Tag: learning

The Tyranny of the Bar-line

Nicole Neal2 Comments

OK, the word tyranny might be a little strong – the humble bar-line never killed anyone or threatened to take over the world. The bar-line does, however, from time to time make perfectly rational beings (and even the less rational ones) do peculiar things, oftentimes without us realizing it. Tricksy little bar-lineses!

How so?cropped-guitar.jpg

Let’s take a slight step back first and look at the bar-line’s function. What’s it there for, all straight up and down, a vertical divider across the stave?

Well, it’s there to help us make sense of where we are rhythmically with the music and fundamentally separates each bar or measure and indicates where the main pulses (see last week’s post for more on that) lie in the music (most of the time anyway).

So why do these seemingly innocuous lines make us do funny things? The placement or observation of a bar-line can sometime create a barrier. I’ve observed (in myself, students and other players – no one is completely immune) that the presence of a bar-line can often have quite a significant psychological impact of “here’s a barrier, here’s an end to something, here’s a beginning to something” when that may not in fact be the case. And here’s the real kicker – you may not always be consciously aware of it! It’s like we’re subconsciously conditioned for these barrier, box-like, neat parcel thingos.

Music doesn’t come in box-shaped parcels

Yes, things balance out rhythmically and mathematically (if you want to go that far) in terms of beats in the bar and so on. However, the phrases and musical lines, more often than not, do not fit neatly into little bar shaped parcels as dictated by the time signature. No, no, no. that would be kind of dull too.

Lines and phrases move across bar-lines, phrases are more fluid than that little vertical stripe would have us otherwise think. Take a look at some of your music now and notice really where the phrases begin and end.

Just like white lines painted on the road, there’s nothing actually physically stopping you from travelling over the line (it’s only paint after all), but we’ve been conditioned to stay within the lines. Of course there are safety considerations and so on that limit this metaphor a little, but you catch my drift.

Here are some tips to avoid the tyranny of the bar-line:

  • Take a look at pieces you’re playing now or new pieces you’re about to start and try to imagine a there are no bar-lines there. Does the melody cross bar-lines? Do phrases, sub-phases or cadence points move to and/ or finish just over a bar-line? What does the shape of the notes suggest in terms of musical direction? Where are the main phrases? Are there smaller sub-phrases in there?
  • Pick out the melody line of your piece and ask yourself how you would sing it? You probably wouldn’t have a wee micro-gap between one note and the next or from one note to the end of the phrase if you were singing a song. Or maybe you would – it’s up to you how you feel these things. But putting these things as that’s how you feel it musically is preferential, I think to doing something because you’ve not really thought about it, or being limited by something you weren’t aware you were being limited by! Using singing (in your head or out loud and as terribly or as beautifully as you like!) can help us find where the music is going naturally.
  • Think and feel “connected” when playing the musical phrases, especially across bar-lines if this idea is new to you!
  • Avoid practicing things in bars, focus on practicing phrases, shapes or lines. This is the essence of the music, not bar divisions.
  • Check out music that has been written without bar-lines. A lot of early music was written in this way (from around 13th century to late 16th/ early 17th century). And more recently Erik Satie was onto something when he wrote his Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes for piano (and other stuff besides) – no bar-lines! It’s not a crazy as it sounds as you can still very much feel a strong sense of pulse in the music, but the absence of bar-lines makes you look the shape of the music on the page to tell you where the music is going.

Pulse: The Heartbeat of Music

Nicole Neal5 Comments
When we’re learning a new piece on the classical guitar it helps to figure out all the notes, where our left hand is going on the fretboard and which fingers on the right hand are playing the strings (other way round, of course, if you’re left-handed). Yep, very useful.
And of course figuring out the rhythm tends to be very important too! Giving those dots on the page a bit of life and movement. As does some lovely dynamics, shaping, phrasing, a bit of push and pull with the tempo in the right places to really bring the music to life. Yep, all sounds good so far?
In getting to grips with all of this there is an important element that we still need to consider and that’s the pulse of the music.
What do I mean by pulse? I mean that sense of the main beats (and sub-beats), the starting points of the bars or the main starting points of a phrase. The pulse is what you tap you foot along too. It’s like a heartbeat – it has that very regular, constant movement. It may speed up a little if things get exciting! It may slow down a little if things are getting more relaxed, but it is always there, pumping away, keeping the music alive
So how do we create that sense of pulse?
Oftentimes, we can naturally feel that sense of pulse in the music we’re playing even when we’re learning something new. As human beings we seemed to be tuned in to consistent pulses – our own heartbeats, walking, dancing. It’s a very natural thing.
But sometimes we do need a helping hand to find that pulse in the music or to really bring it out where it needs it and take that piece of music and your playing to the next level.
This may be the case if the piece is very new to you or unfamiliar, if there are cross-rhythms or polyrhythms going on in various voices, if there is some syncopation going on or shifting of beats or if you’ve got some other rhythmic interest (such as moving from quavers to quaver hemiola back to straight quavers for example). Sometimes you might even need a bit of a helping hand if you’re just plain old struggling to make sense of it and there’s absolutely no shame in that!
How can we help create that sense of pulse?
We look at tempo markings (of course, whilst we’re first getting to know a piece we may play at a slightly slower tempo than the tempo we may have in mind for performance or goal tempo) and we also look at the meter or the time signature of the piece.
The time signature tells us how often that pulse will arrive – every three beats for example for something in 3/4. And the tempo of the piece, whether explicitly directed on the page or “felt” by you as the musician tells us how frequently (i.e. how fast) the main pulses arrive.
Looking at the shape of the music on the page can also sometimes give us an indication of where the bigger phrases might lie, so we can see where a pulse or emphasis for a start of a phrase might lie at least.
Having your trusty metronome on hand then, when practicing, to keep that pulse ticking away in the right time signature at a manageable tempo can also be invaluable from time to time.
Yes, it will create that very metric, dead on, on the dot, square pulse and when practicing with the metronome there will be little room for flex or push and pull in the tempo or the pulse. But that’s not the aim of working with a metronome. Push and pull, and an injection of real lifeblood (i.e. musicality) into the pulse will naturally follow when you know exactly where that pulse lies. But you’ve got to find it first though! It’s no use trying to give someone CPR if you don’t know where their heart is!!
Once you’ve used the metronome as a guide for a while you should hopefully become more familiar with and more comfortable with where the pulse lies. It should start to become embedded within you, within your fingers and in your brain as “this is the pulse for this piece“. You should be getting that natural “feel” for the pulse. This is when you can put the metronome back into the cupboard (or close the app on your smartphone) and leave it there, having well and truly done its job for the time being.
And then this is when things can really get exciting and you can start to make real music. Now you know, feel and understand where the pulse lies you can begin to play around with it to really shape your musical phrases, create feelings of tension and release and create a sense of movement and direction.
The music is coming under your direction and control rather than just playing whatever. Find your pulse and find the heartbeat of your music.