Playing Beyond the Bar Line

By Anne Sullivan

The bar line, that thin vertical line separating one measure from the next, is more powerful than you may think. It helps you play your music more easily but it can also slow you down if you aren’t careful. Let me explain.

Bar lines have been used in music since the 15th century as a simple way to visually indicate the meter of music. In other words, bar lines help us “see” the time signature as we play. Each measure, separated from the other measures by bar lines, is organized for us to help us make sense of the rhythms in the measure. If you want to see just how helpful they are, try playing a piece of music with no bar lines!

Sometimes, however, we unintentionally let ourselves pause at the bar line. It does look like a dividing or stopping place but obviously, unless we are at the very end of the piece, we can’t stop at the bar line without making our music sound choppy. The bar line may seem like a natural place to regroup, to check our fingering or placing or to read the next group of notes. But iIf we aren’t careful, pausing at the bar lines may become a habit that is hard to break.

How do you know if you are pausing at the bar lines? Your teacher will be able to tell you, or you can easily find it out for yourself by videoing part of your practice session. If you nearly always have trouble making your music flow, this may be a symptom of a bar line problem too. If you suspect you are pausing at the bar lines, your next step is to break the habit.

The first thing I have my students do is to listen to the melody of the pieces, usually phrase by phrase. Singing the melody is even better. When you try this, you may discover that the melody begins just before a bar line and ends in the middle of a bar as well. Then play the melody, singing it out loud or in your head. Don’t worry about the fingering; just create a smoothly flowing tune. Repeat these steps daily in your practice until you are certain you are playing the passage without bar line breaks.

Another good practice habit is to consciously look across the bar line for fingering connections. The music doesn’t halt at the bar line and in many cases the fingering doesn’t either. Making your fingering connect across the bar lines where appropriate will help avoid a bar line pause.

When you are practicing a passage by itself, out of the context of the piece, always start a beat or two before the passage begins and end a beat or two after, so that you are not beginning or ending at a bar line. This not only will help prevent a bar line pause, but it will help you make a seamless transition into and out of the passage when you put it back into the whole piece.

Try this little experiment to practice reading across the bar lines: 

• Choose a page of music or a shorter passage, if you prefer.
• Put the metronome on. Any tempo is fine, but you may want to try your goal tempo for the piece.
• Count aloud, just saying the main beats in each measure. (In other words, you don’t have to say any “ands”.)
• While you are counting, play only the notes on the first beat of each measure. Use both hands. The point is to let your eye skip ahead to the next bar line to find your next notes. That is how to use the bar line as a marker, rather than a barrier.