Hi Everyone,

Earlier this year I found out about GuitarCenter's annual GuitarMaggedon contest, and that the theme this year was going to be Blues. I decided to enter this contest since I am into the Blues. I made it to the round 2 store competition and finally lost out this week. Although I was very dissapointed, I did learn some valuable lessons in going through this process over the past few months. For those of you who have never heard about this competition, it is kind of like an American Idol style competition for Guitar Players. You perform a solo to a backing track on stage in front of 3 judges who grade you based on technique, style, originality, and stage presence. I wanted to write a post to outline some of the lessons learned in this process, good and bad.

The Good:
Entering a contest like this provides a great way to kick your butt into high gear, stretch youself musically, and force you to focus. Fear is a great motivator. My main goal of the competition was to concentrate on playing a solo that highlighted my own style as much as possible, and inject as much originality as I could muster. There's nothing like the tought of going up on stage alone in front of a room of judges to motivate you to wood shed and get your playing up a notch or two. I also worked heavily on my phrasing with a metronome and found out how useful it is to do that. I also used humor in coming up with some new licks, hoping that this would provide some things that would set me apart. (I made some blues licks using movie themes, etc. Note: the theme for the Simpson's works great over an altered dominant chord :-) This worked great in the first round of competition. I even made one of the judges laugh during my solo.

The Bad:
On the down side I learned that these contests are about more than just the music. The guy that won on the second round of competition beat out everyone else based on his stage antics more than anything else. Technically and musically he wasn't playing as well as some of the other guys in the competition but he was able to work the crowd by making all the right stage moves, guitar faces, etc.

Lessons learned:
My take away from this experience, although a little painful for me to accept, is that when performing live we have to understand that we are entertainers first. Where I had prepared for the contest by working on my chops and musical ideas the mostly, the winner probably focused on how he would connect with the audience in a visual way. Sometimes your audience isn't listening to all of your ideas as much as they are watching how you move and react as you play. (note: one of the judges in the second round was a non-musician, manager of a radio station, hence the emphasis on stage presence) I've always been less comfortable with haming it up onstage , and making guitar faces when I play since I'm concentrating so much on nailing a lick, getting the right tone, etc. I guess it pays to work on your stage presence in the same way that you work on your phrasing with a metronome, a lesson hard learned. One guy that I admire who was good at both aspects was the late great Stevie Ray Vaughn. He could play is butt off and he had some nice stage antics to go with it.

-- Jim