Air Guitar - Contests

Contests

Organized air guitar competitions are regularly held in many countries. The first on-off air guitar competitions were organized in the early 1980s in Sweden and in the United States. Since 1996 the annual Air Guitar World Championships have been a part of the Oulu Music Video Festival in Oulu, Finland, and the festival currently administers the Air Guitar World Championships Network of official national championship competitions. The idea of the contest was originally coined as a joke, meant only to be a side attraction for the music video festival, but has since become a major draw in its own right.

In 2009 the Network consisted of twenty countries: Finland, USA, New Zealand, Canada, The Netherlands, Greece, Belgium, Norway, United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, Japan, Australia, Germany, Taiwan, Thailand, Russia, Romania, and Brazil.

Rules have much in common with figure skating, especially using 6.0 score system. The most common set of rules are as following:

• Each participant has to play air guitar on stage in two rounds, each lasting for 1 minute.
  • Round 1: participant plays a selection of their own choosing. Typically the song has been edited (or a medley has been created) to fit the 60-second format.
  • Round 2: participant plays a section of the song chosen by an organizer or competitor; usually the song is not announced beforehand and kept secret until the round begins, so a participant has to improvise.
• Participant plays alone; backing bands, either with real or air instruments are not allowed; roadies and groupies are allowed to make up some image, but they have to leave the stage before performance.
• Participant has to play air guitar (i.e. air drums, piano and other instruments are not allowed). Air guitar can be acoustic, electric or both.
• Generally, there is no dress code and participant is encouraged to use any clothing and props that would add character and make the performance more interesting. However, any real musical equipment or crew (instruments, amplifiers, effect pedals, backing band members, etc.) are strictly forbidden. Some events make an exception for a real guitar pick, some don't.
• Jury consists of independent judges, usually B-list musicians, music critics, comedians, or other members of the media.
• Judges use the same 6.0 score system as in figure skating: there are several varying criteria, each judge must give the contestant a score from 4.0 to 6.0 on each of the following:
  • Technical merit—how much the performance looks like the real playing, including accurate reproduction of all fretwork, chords, solos and technical moves.
  • Mimesmanship—how convincingly the performer can mime their performance, and create the illusion of an invisible guitar, apart from the technical accuracy of the fretwork
  • Stage presence—a charisma of rock star, the ability to rock, lack of stage fright and power to drive thousands of listeners; involves guitar showmanship and other emotional demonstrations.
  • Airness—the most subjective criterion, as "presentation" in figure skating—how much the performance was an object of art by itself, not only a simulation of playing guitar.