Milos Karadaglic: a guitar lesson from the classical maestro "Tárrega wrote it when he came to London for the first and last time," he explained. It was raining all the time and he was very depressed and homesick, and he wrote this simple piece, Lágrima, which means teardrop, and every note is like a tear. It's such a delicate little piece, and there's so much more to it than what's on the page. On paper it looks straightforward, except maybe for the bit where you have to shift up to the top end of the guitar neck, but learning the notes isn't the same thing as understanding how to express the piece. I managed to play almost three bars before Milos intervened. "No!" he declared. If I was a Montenegrin teacher, I would be poking you with a pencil - it's the Communist way. Let's take it really, really slowly. You're very impatient, are you hurrying somewhere? And make it very rhythmical. Don't panic, you're going to get there. I started again, trying to emote tastefully. Milos instantly called another halt. Why are you separating the first two notes? Because that's how you play it on your Mediterraneo CD... Well, I always do that and it's unique to me, but it's not really right. My teacher tried to stop me doing it, but then he gave up because he felt it was part of how I play. In my opinion, it sings much better that way, but it's not something I would teach you as my student. So the first rule of classical guitar is: the rules that apply to the blundering novice can be ignored by gifted virtuosi. Meanwhile, back at the first two notes of Lágrima, there was no end of things to learn. Milos was getting into his pedagogic stride. You have to relax your shoulders - you draw the sound from your whole body, right down to your feet. Can you play me just those first notes? When you hit the note, it's always very good to just press a little bit harder in the left hand. Yes, that's very nice. It's like you're singing it, that's the beauty of this piece. It's really bel canto - deee, daaaah, deeee, daaaah. Eventually, it was time to slide up the guitar neck to the 12th fret... almost. "Only play the previous note when in your head you have already moved your left hand to the next chord," Milos instructed. Then you're that half-step ahead, and you will never make mistakes. Right, here's my left hand up at the octave. What I've been doing is... No, let's not go over what you've been doing! My way is much better. My fingering here is very beautiful. Watch what I'm doing, I'm the teacher. The second finger moves down, the others are released, and the first finger joins. Wonderful! After fumbling for a bit, I found that his way was, oddly enough, much better. Milos was jubilant. Perfect! You can play Lágrima at concert standard if you practise three to four hours a day for three weeks. Then it will be your piece for ever, and I suggest you do that. You can come to that piece whenever you feel happy or sad or lonely. That may mean practising in the middle of the night, though. "I love playing late at night," said Milos. "But I have this neighbour upstairs going 'Shut up!," and I'm saying 'Don't you understand? You're getting thousands of pounds" worth of free music!" But that didn't make him laugh, so I had to stop. My neighbours complain, too, though possibly for different reasons. But at least it's reassuring to reflect that even some of the greatest musicians of all time have been far from perfect, in a technical sense. Take the legendary Segovia, whose recordings first inspired Milos to play the guitar. "Segovia had bananas for fingers, it's really weird when he plays," he said. But you can't say his technique was bad, because the body does what it needs to do to achieve a musical result. It's like [opera singer] Maria Callas - the authority and charisma are unbelievable and unrepeatable. Nobody has perfect technique on any instrument, there's always something that can be improved. I'm glad he said that. It will make for a comforting mantra when I'm plucking away into the small hours. Milos's new album, 'Latino," is released this week on DG. Milos will perform at the Albert Hall on September 25