We discuss an approach for the practical implementation of photonic arbitrary waveform generation of microwave signals. We describe and demonstrate an approach using spatial-spectral (S2) holography in rare earth ion doped crystals that has the potential to achieve extremely wide bandwidths $(>40\mathrm{GHz})$ using conventional electro-optic phase modulators and low bandwidth $(<100\mathrm{MHz})$ control electronics. We provide analysis of this approach, show simulations, and perform experimental demonstrations of the technique. We show a pulse compression factor of $\sim \mathrm{15,000}$ and demonstrate the largest effective bandwidth of $3.8\mathrm{GHz}$ to date for pulse compression using S2 holography. We also show control and manipulation of up to 30 independent compressed pulses for the creation of arbitrary waveforms.