Dear Future Students and Teachers,

​

My name is Rodrigo Moreira, founder of All Tempos. In the following pages, I'd like to share the story of how a career-ending injury completely changed my life, ultimately leading me to develop a teaching method focused on adult learners that has helped hundreds of students—and how that journey inspired the creation of this music school.

​

I came to the United States after being awarded a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston, where I graduated with honors (Magna Cum Laude) with a degree in Guitar Performance, specializing in Jazz.

​

After graduation, I dedicated myself to performing, teaching, and writing. I published my own guitar method, Music with No Shortcuts: Everything a Guitarist Needs to Know in One Book, and created a blog called GuitarTheoryLessons.com—the very website you're browsing today. My goal was simple: share everything I had learned over the years and help guitarists overcome the same challenges I had faced. The website quickly became a valuable educational resource and brought me students from all over the world.

​

Everything was going well.

​

Then COVID happened.

​

Like many musicians, I spent countless hours practicing and teaching every single day. I became obsessed with improving my playing, often practicing for long periods without adequate rest. One day, I noticed that the ring finger on my left hand—the hand responsible for playing notes and chords—began making involuntary movements.

​

At first, I thought it was temporary.

​

It wasn't.

​

After countless doctor appointments, physical therapy sessions, imaging exams, and nerve tests, no one could explain what was happening. Meanwhile, the involuntary movements spread to my pinky finger.

​

First, I could no longer play fast solos.

​

Then I couldn't play riffs.

​

Eventually, even simple chords became difficult.

​

Imagine spending your entire life preparing for a career as a guitarist, only to lose the ability to do something as basic as hold down a chord.

​

The emotional impact was devastating.

​

For years, I lived with frustration, anxiety, and depression. Every day I questioned whether I should give up music altogether.

​

The only answers I found came not from doctors, but from other musicians who had experienced the same condition. Depending on who you ask, it's referred to as musician's cramp, an overuse injury, or focal dystonia. Regardless of the name, the result was the same: I had lost control over the very movements that had defined my life.

​

Everything changed when I discovered the Alexander Technique.

​

I learned that many injured musicians had regained their abilities by understanding how the body is naturally designed to move—eliminating unnecessary tension and restoring efficient movement.

​

Later, I studied the Taubman Approach, which applies many of these same principles directly to instrumental performance.

​

These methods transformed the way I understood technique.

​

Instead of forcing movements, I learned how to work with the body's natural mechanics rather than against them. Not only did these principles become essential in my own recovery, but I also realized they could help beginners avoid developing the kinds of habits that often lead to frustration, tension, and even injury.

​

During my recovery, I worked almost exclusively with beginner students of all ages.

​

I became obsessed with two ideas:

​

The first was helping my students develop an efficient, tension-free technique by teaching them how to move naturally.

​

My own injury taught me that great technique isn't about effort or force. It's about understanding how the body is designed to move.

​

The second idea was equally transformative: 

​

Every song, every exercise, and every technical challenge can be broken down into the simplest possible step that anyone can learn.

​

Sometimes that meant analyzing the movement of a single finger. Other times it meant redesigning an exercise so that success became almost inevitable.

​

I wanted every student to experience the feeling of making progress, regardless of age or previous experience.

​

The results exceeded anything I could have imagined.

​

Hundreds of students learned to play the songs they had dreamed about for years.

​

But what fascinated me the most was something else.

​

Adults—many of whom believed they had "missed their chance" to learn music—were succeeding.

People in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and even later were discovering that they were far more capable than they had been led to believe.

​

One of those students was Ronald.

​

Ronald started taking lessons at the age of 65 with absolutely no previous musical experience. The videos below show his progress after just two months of lessons and then again one month later.​​