Here is a little story that describes what I thought of the Maestro’s abilites.

My first car was a red VW Beetle.

When anything went wrong I used to take it to the VW garage which was in the same building we lived in. The only problem was that every time they fixed it, one or two other things would go wrong. When I got tired of this, some people recommended an independent and very reliable mechanic. Even though his garage was far from where I lived, I decided to pay him a visit. The fellow turned out to be amazing. I’d drive up to his workshop and he’d come out and ask: “What’s the problem?”. After describing the symptom, he’d ask me to turn on the engine. Within 5 seconds he’d look at me and say, “OK. I know what it is. Come back in two hours.” And two hours later the beetle would be running wonderfully.

With the guitar I came upon a similar person:

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Abel Carlevaro

All he’d have to do is listen and watch a guitarist for 15 seconds (longer than the car mechanic) in order to analyse the guitarist’s difficulties and devise a way to solve them. But while some problems were resolved in minutes others, which required the total participation of the player, usually took much more than the two hours needed to fix the Beetle.

As Carlevaro’s student and later his teaching assistant, I learned to cultivate a similar aptitude for diagnosing difficulties. Just watching a new student tune the instrument tells me a lot about the way the player uses the guitar and––more importantly––his or her body. Once I have the guitarist’s cooperation and trust, the road to healthy recovery is clearly paved.

Not every great teacher is necessarily good for every student. A lot of factors are involved to determine whether the chemistry between student and teacher is right. In my particular case, I will just say that before discovering Abel Carlevaro, I was ready to give up the classical guitar and focus on a career as a composer. At one point I even toyed with the idea of returning to my previous field of psychology.