Hi, I’m Phil Olson, the Awesome Guitar Teacher
I’ve had a guitar in my hands for most of my life. What started as a teenager chasing the songs I loved turned into something I never outgrew – a lifelong fascination with how six strings and a fretboard can hold an entire universe of music. More than four decades later, that fascination hasn’t faded one bit. If anything, it’s the thing I most want to pass on.
I studied Political Science at Gustavus Adolphus College, with a minor in Music Performance, before heading out to Los Angeles to earn a degree in Recording Engineering. Along the way, I devoted four and a half years to formal study as a classical and jazz guitarist – training that gave me both the discipline of the classical tradition and the rich harmonic vocabulary of jazz.
However, it was in LA that I learned some of the most significant guitar concepts of my life from a remarkable player named Peter Butterfield – himself a student of the legendary Ted Greene. Those ideas about harmony and the architecture of the neck reshaped the way I understood the instrument, and they still echo through everything I teach today.
But the most important lessons came from years of wrestling with the guitar myself – hitting the same walls, feeling the same frustration, and slowly discovering that the instrument isn’t nearly as mysterious as it first seems. That discovery is the heart of what I believe about the guitar: it’s a logical, knowable instrument, not a maze you’re doomed to stumble through. Most players spend years memorizing shapes and songs without ever understanding why any of it works. They learn to play, but the neck stays a blur of disconnected facts. I’m convinced it doesn’t have to be that way. The fretboard is full of repeating patterns, and once you can see them, the whole instrument opens up. That moment – when a student’s eyes light up because the guitar finally clicks – is the reason I teach.
Over almost 25 years of teaching, I’ve refined a way of explaining the guitar that meets players where they are and gives them what most never get: real understanding. It’s the same approach behind my instructional books, The Awesome Guitar Series, which have now reached players in 12 countries. At the center of it all is my D-C-A-G-F-E system – a way of seeing the entire neck as one connected map rather than a pile of memorized positions. More than anything, I want my students to walk away free. My goal has never been to keep anyone dependent on me – it’s to teach the instrument so clearly that you can keep growing on your own long after our lessons end.
Music has been the thread running through every season of my life. My wife and I have been married for 36 years and raised two wonderful children, a son and a daughter. For the last 25 years I’ve had the joy of leading praise and worship around the Minneapolis – St. Paul area, and a couple of years ago I was invited to help lead worship at a weekend conference at Lake Chapala in Mexico. A humbling reminder that the guitar can carry you to places and people you’d never expect. The instrument has given me a rich life, and that’s exactly why I’m so eager to share it.
That’s the whole reason Oslo Studios exists, right here in Burnsville – not just to help people play guitar, but to help them finally understand it. Whether you’re picking up a guitar for the very first time or you’ve been playing for years and know something’s missing, I’d love to help you understand the music you’ve always wanted to make. Reach out anytime – I’d love to hear your story.
