The amazing David Grier returned to Cracking the Code for a second meeting, and that interview is now live on the platform! At just over an hour, it contains 31 musical examples, including a handful of David’s trademark beautiful full-song playthroughs. It was an awesome conversation on a sunny summer day where we learned some fascinating things about his creative and mechanical process. This includes a valuable peek into David’s higher-speed mechanics that we didn’t get the first time around.

If you’ve spent much time on our forum, you know Tommo for his amazing covers of the likes of John Petrucci and Vinnie Moore.

The forearm is one of the most important joints in all of picking technique. And in the newly updated Forearm Motion section of the Pickslanting Primer, we’ve rolled out over one hour and forty minutes of in-depth, hands-on tutorials for getting its many superpowers working in your own playing.

Nearly five years after our first Kickstarter attempt, we think it may be time for another go at getting the Magnet manufactured!

The Magnet is that red camera mount you’ve probably seen clamped onto a guitar neck in our lessons and interviews. It’s an awesome tool for filming your technique, and it works with any smartphone.

We’re happy to announce the Cracking the Code Scholarship Program, to help bring our resources for learning guitar technique to as many players as possible.

From sharing videos on YouTube, to making forum access free for all, it’s long been important to us to balance the business side of Cracking the Code with a goal of helping all kinds of guitarists learn and improve.

With the scholarship, we’re now able to offer a reduced-rate monthly membership — our all access pass to the site — for anyone who needs it.

We’ve been speaking with the amazing Wim Den Herder for what feels like forever, to figure out a time for him to get out here to NYC. We were finally able to connect the dots a couple weeks ago. If you haven’t heard Wim play, his style is an utterly unique mix of jazz, funk, and prog punctuated by unexpected dynamic changes and instantly addictive melodies. And he delivers it all on a single acoustic guitar, like a space-age Tommy Emmanuel.