Music is a universal language, and it connects to all of us, just ask classical guitarist Pablo Sainz Villegas.

    "If I speak Spanish to someone who is Chinese, he won’t understand a word, but if I play some music, he will understand me, and that is incredible," he said when he visited Shores on Nov. 18 and played with Guitar 2 students at 1:30 p.m. in the auditorium.

    After a short introduction, Villegas sat down, watched and listened as about half of the guitar students played a traditional classical guitar piece called "Romance de Amor."

    Villegas, after the performance, stood up and critiqued the piece saying the song should be slower and more passionate like real love and started playing it himself.

    He played the music as though the whole group was playing it, with the background and melody in tandem. The tempo fluctuated with the volume of the music.

    Villegas then began to explain he was using the volume and tempo fluctuations to accentuate the major and minor parts of the music.

     "Music is a pendulum; it has pace," Villegas said. "The audience enters this pace you created, and it captures them giving you control."

    Villegas told the students to play the piece with a slower tempo at minor parts and a faster tempo at major parts. The students seemed to struggle at first but picked the concept up quickly, playing the song even better than before.

    "Music is like architecture; it is made of levels and blocks. This gives the music structure," Villegas said after the second performance.

    The next piece the students played was "All in a Garden Green" by John Jenkins. The whole class played this song while Villegas stood and watched, following along with the sheet music.

    "Beautiful. I don’t have much to say, just beautiful," said Villegas after the piece was played. "However, when you know the music well, you need to listen to the other parts of the piece. Play it again, and pay attention to the other parts and the dynamics of the song."

    The song was played three times with Villegas telling students to feel the music and forget about outside distractions to play the piece with perfection. The last time the piece was played the crescendo moments were great and full of power.

    After the songs played by the students, Villegas showed the students a fingering exercise to work the muscles and joints used in the playing of classical guitar. Villegas works with every student who needed help and spends time with them until they got the exercise.

    Following this exercise, Villegas talked about growing up in Spain and his travels to Madrid, Berlin, and New York where he competed for his 28 international awards for his playing. He spoke about how difficult it was in Germany because he didn’t know the language or anyone there.

    "The important thing in life is to endure difficult moments because they turn out to be good moments later in life," Villegas explained about his difficulties in Germany.

    Villegas then proceeded to ask people about Argentina, including what dance originates there, which is of course the tango. Villegas then started to play an extremely complicated tango piece, showing things he talked about before. The tempo and volume went up and down repeatedly within the background and melody, and he was immersed in the music, moving his whole body in sync with the melody and accented notes.

    Villegas then talked about a city in Spain called Granada, where a palace stands from Muslim rule called the Alhambra.

     "This palace," Villegas explained, "had been built on a river, so the sound of running water could be heard throughout the palace, and this inspired many artists to write music, and one of these was Francisco Tarrega."

    Villegas then played the song "Recuerdos de la Alhambra", which means "Memories of the Alhambra," by Tarrega. He played the background in a fast-paced but at the same time fluent way where the running water can be heard flowing through the palace.

    "The piece (Villegas) played was very good and it sounded very fluid," Junior Jade Wotli said about the Tarrega Piece.

     "(Villegas) is an amazing player, I am amazed at how his music flows together when he plays," Freshman Alex Pearson said, after seeing the performance from the audience.

    People in the audience could get Villegas to sign autographs although he was hesitant to sign guitars. After the show, he even showed Guitar teacher Rod Shaub a few techniques on classical guitar before leaving Shores to get ready for his concerts on Friday and Saturday.