Have you ever felt like people keep trying to put you in a box?

In life, maybe they call you scatterbrained. Say you have too many interests. That you need to narrow your focus, get serious, stick to one thing.

Your guitar journey is probably the same way.

You don’t just like one genre—you like a bunch. Blues, jazz, classic rock, fingerstyle, fusion. You’re not chasing a single label or identity. You’re chasing the feeling of being fully expressed.

Today's newsletter is going to be a little bit like our guitar journeys. It's going to seem a bit scattered, a bit random, I'm going to jump from topic to topic, but at the end it will all make sense, just like your guitar playing will eventually all make sense. 

Random #1: We Are Different

As a guitarist, I’ve heard all the same advice my entire life.

The message is always the same—be one thing. And because of that, I never fit in with anyone. How do you find people with a seemingly random array of guitar influences? 

I've pushed back against this logic my entire life because I truly believe your curiosity isn’t a problem. It's a beautiful, unique advantage. 

Because let’s be honest—some of us don’t just “like” different styles. We need them. We come alive when we bounce between a jazz tune, a blues solo, and a rock riff. We’re not being scattered. We’re being honest.

And this weekend, it finally clicked for me why that’s not just okay—it might be the very thing that makes us whole. But we need to take a few steps back to fully understand this. 

My battle with being boxed in has been there my entire life. But it was even more present when I tried to build a platform to help guitarists grow.

Naturally, I asked for help—read the business books, paid for coaching, took the advice.

And over and over, they told me the same thing:

“Andre, you need to focus. One genre. One message. One type of player.”

They showed me examples: metal guys who teach nothing but shredding. Jazz teachers who only do standards. Classic rock guys. etc. 

And I get it. That’s a smart way to build a business.

But what if that’s not the kind of guitarist I am?
What if that’s not who I help?

What if that isn't YOU reading this right now?

Here’s the truth:

I love fingerstyle and blues.
I love jazz harmony and classic rock.
I love slow phrasing, fast legato, and everything in between.

I love it when a new student shows me Mathrock, and I have to deep-dive to crack the code of this genre to help him improve. 

And most of the guitarists I teach are the same. Curious. Wide-ranging. Unboxable. Maybe your interests are different from mine, but they are probably also diverse. Can you relate?

Random #2: Song Development

A few months ago, during a live Q&A, someone asked me:
“If you could only focus on one thing to grow as a guitarist, what would it be?”

I said:

“Master one song every two months. Just six songs a year. Go deep on each one.”

It sounds too simple. Almost too slow.

But here’s what happens when you commit to a song:

You stop treating theory and technique like separate chores.
You start hearing them in context. Feeling them. Owning them.

You build touch, timing, phrasing—not from exercises, but from the music itself.

That’s the kind of learning that sticks. Not surface-level. Not scattered. But anchored.

So that piece of advice was sitting in my head—the whole “master one song every two months” thing. It kept floating around, and I couldn’t shake it.

Random #3: AC/DC

Then I launched a community… and something weird happened.

We go live every week for Q&A, so you can get your guitar questions answered, learn from other people's struggles, and just meet other real guitarists on the path. It just so happened that one of the first full sessions we did was a breakdown of The Jack by ACDC.

I’ll leave that session below for you.

But we went deep—bending, rock phrasing, pentatonics, getting that aggression and feel just right. It wasn’t just a blues-rock tune. It was a full-on study in tone and timing. Honestly, it was one of the best sessions we’ve done so far.

Random #4: Fly Me To The Moon

And then, a few days later, I looked at another feature in the community—our monthly, member-voted song breakdown. The idea is, every month the community votes for 1 song, then I do an extensive breakdown and lesson on the song (harmony, melody, improv, fingerstyle arranging, tab, guitar pro, backing tracks. EVERYTHING)

Well the song that won for August is Fly Me to the Moon.

That’s when it hit me.

We just had a bunch of people getting fired up over an ACDC solo. And those same people voted to go deep on a jazz standard for the next month.

That’s it. That’s the puzzle piece I’d been missing all along.

It’s not that we’re unfocused or scattered.
It’s that we’re full. We’re open. We’re curious.

We’re the kind of players who can love a gritty blues-rock solo one week and dive into rich jazz harmony the next. And that’s not a weakness. It’s the exact kind of player I’ve been trying to build for—and build with—all this time. We are those guitarists. 

How It All Fits Together

So now it all makes sense.

This thing I’ve been building—kind of stubbornly, kind of quietly—was never meant to serve just one type of guitarist. It was meant to give us a place.

The ones who bend like Angus and comp like Joe Pass.
The ones who don’t want to choose between grit and elegance.
The ones who want to grow, not narrow.

That’s who’s been showing up in the community.

One guy I know is deep into jazz—but he was nodding along the whole time during the ACDC breakdown. Another player voted for Fly Me to the Moon—and I’ve seen her post about blues phrasing and Hendrix lines.

It’s not random. It’s real.

It’s what happens when you stop trying to market to an algorithm and start connecting with actual people—players with rich, wide, musical lives.

And now that the pieces are in place, I know exactly what this is.

We’re not building guitarists who fit in boxes.
We’re building guitarists who are whole.

If that sounds like you… if you’ve ever felt like you’re “too scattered” or “too curious” for the way things are usually taught online—don’t change. Don’t shrink.

Just find a place that lets you go deep without boxing you in.

If you want to check out the live session, reply to this email and I'll send it to you with the full breakdown. And if you’re curious about the community, you can join us here. 

Piece by piece,
Andre Fludd
Lifelong Guitarist