The Journal.
Interviews with the players I admire, gear deep-dives, song breakdowns, and lessons from the studio.
Every guitarist develops habits from day one—the question is whether those habits help or hurt your playing. Self-taught players especially tend to develop techniques that work in the short term but sometimes create problems down the line. The more you repeat incorrect technique, the harder those habits become to break.
It sounds almost too good to be true, but history has shown us that sometimes the most iconic moments in guitar music didn’t come from deliberate songwriting sessions. They came from guitarists sitting alone, warming up, drilling finger exercises, and chasing better technique.
San Holo—DJ, producer, songwriter, and at his core, a highly skilled guitarist from a small town in Holland. While he’s known for breaking the internet with remixes, producing tracks with industry legends, and pioneering the future bass genre, most of his work begins in the same place: him and his guitar.
What separates good guitar playing from transcendent guitar playing? Julian Lage, widely recognized as one of the greatest guitarists of this generation, believes it comes down to something deceptively simple yet profoundly difficult: touch. Not just how your fingers contact the strings, but how your entire body, breath, and mind translate into sound.
If you’ve ever felt stuck when it comes to improvisation — running out of ideas, noodling up and down scales without any real direction — this one’s for you.
There is something extremely satisfying about playing chords, melody, and bass all on one guitar — and that’s exactly what we’re going to do in this lesson.