Can you hear me playing?

 The title might sound a bit confusing, but you may guess that this blog post will be about people who pretend to play instruments, to be more precise, the guitar. Sounds strange, but there actually is more to it than anyone, including me, would have reckoned.

To give you a short introduction, the last "Annual Air Guitar World Championship Contest" Winner,   Eric "Mean Melin" Melin:

 What do you think?

I actually play the guitar myself and I love listening to music played with guitars, maybe I even sometimes play air guitar, but why would I ever want to go up stage with my invisible skills?!

Come on, take one!

One big reason for the success of playing air guitar professionally may be that it's absolutely free. You need yourself and a lot of imagination.

And it's fun.

Anyway, obvious questions probably crossed everyone's mind when watching the video above: How and where did they qualify for a World Championship? Who judges them and how do they judge them?

To qualify for the World Championship, you have to succeed in a national one (and a lot of countries have nationals, for instance, Germany does, Austria not).
The juries usually consist of B-list musicians, comedians, music critics and so on.
The scoring system is the same as in figure skating, which means there is a maximum of 6.0 points and there are four different criteria the jury judges on.
In two rounds, each round one minute, the participants have to show what they are capable of.

I really like the criteria because they sound that serious and professional:
1) Technique: The air guitar player has to play the song correctly as if he played on a real guitar, including riffs, solos, chords, etc. That's why a lot of them actually know how to play in real.
2) Mime: The illusion that they hold a real guitar while doing all the rock moves must be kept up.
3) Stage presence: The candidates have to drive the listeners. They have to be rock stars and entertain the audience!
4) Art: The performance has to be art, not just simulating to play the guitar. That one's rather subjective...

Maybe it's best to watch the video of Melin again. With all this new knowledge you may look at it from a different perspective, observing his technique and the rock moves.

If you want to check out the official website of the World Championships or this infographic.


Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_guitar
http://usairguitar.com/