How to Play Air Guitar

There are many kinds of funny and weird skills that people come up with. One such skill or you can say a fun activity is 'air guitaring'. Air guitaring can be done purposefully or just for the reason of excitement from your favorite rock song. Similar to the guitar, there are many other musical instruments which you can mimic playing. Common examples are drums and keyboards, or even DJ mixing equipment.

What is Air Guitaring?

Air guitaring is a kind of a fun and energetic dancing style which has evolved in somewhat informal ways. However, as of now, this dance and skill has gone to international levels, with competitions being held throughout the whole world. It is a dance which involves a person pretending to play a real guitar with the same aggressiveness and enthusiasm that rock guitarists display on stage. This activity can even include singing out loud with the song's lyrics or simply lip-synching. When performing with the air guitar, you can be as crazy and aggressive as you want. Since 1966, the Air Guitar World Championships are held every year as a part of the Music Video Festival in Oulu, Finland. Initially, air guitar competitions were considered as a joke, but later turned out to be prominent parts of international festivals.

How to Play Air Guitar

The first thing you need to do in playing the air guitar is to select the music you like to play along with. Music can be of any genre, as long as you would like to do air guitaring on it. Normally, air guitaring is done on rock or metal songs, which have guitar riffs and leads in the main role. If you are not able to find the right song, you can just tune into some rock radio stations. The second thing is holding the guitar just the way you like. Remember that it is just an imaginary guitar and you can hold it in a way you prefer or just think about how the guitarist might be holding the instrument while playing that particular song.

Since here you will not need to worry much about chords and notations, you can just strum and play chords roughly. But make sure you seem to change the chords of the fretting hand along with the chord changing pattern in the song. Consider the strumming pattern the playing song has, and strum with the plectrum accordingly. When it comes to the lead part, you can just listen to and understand the tunes and simulate lead on the imaginary fretboard. After you have got a hold of this, you can then try out different skills which are used by professional musicians on stage.

If you have a smooth platform, you can slide on your knees, kneel down, and play the guitar with the fingerboard facing the ceiling. You can move the guitar up and down, bend you knees, spread you legs, strum like a windmill, and do a wide range of stunts with the air guitar. You can even jump or leap in the air at the end of a bar and show guitar showmanship.

Knowing how to play air guitar does not at all need any knowledge on playing the real guitar. If you want to learn to play guitar for simple enjoyment, air guitaring is the best option. If you have real interest in learning the skill, you will have to take guitar lessons on how to play guitar for beginners. I hope you might have enjoyed reading this article on air guitaring.