“The nuances arise from our delicate lack of respect for the rhythm.”
Andrés Segovia

Musicians sometimes talk about “playing in the pocket”. As with many things musicians say, what they mean is a little mysterious, but, as far as I can tell, they’re referring to an organic sense of time — the local, natural rhythm that a group of musicians finds in the moment of playing. It’s not the time of the metronome, but the pulse of the performance. It’s not something you measure but something you feel.

Mysticism aside, it is usually achieved by each member of the group playing a little “off” the beat, yet somehow “in sync” with the others. Their playing is not oriented around some external, abstract standard tempo, but by what the other peo