Great Debate: Does Air Guitar Require Any Skill?

Does Air Guitar Require Any Skill?

Yes! It’s harder than it looks.

-- Brendan Butler

Air guitar is one of the purest forms of music appreciation. Like most sports, it’s invented by the elastic imagination of children--those who saw the likes of Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend, Eddie Van Halen, among others, deify themselves on stage with their miraculously elusive device that brought the sound of angels down to Earth.

Perhaps Bill and Ted played a role in resonating air guitar with the moviegoing youth of the late ‘80s, though it wasn’t implemented as a sport until the mid-‘90s, when clubs in L.A. and New York started selling out venues to watch ordinary folk show off their master craftsmen skill of this new art form.

I mean, you think holding a guitar, knowing the chords and churning them out is hard enough, but imagine there being no guitar. Where would you be then? Air guitar legends like Björn Türoque and C-Diddy, featured in the superb documentary Air Guitar Nation, have accomplished a mesmorizing brilliance that can only be described as … wow!

You don’t just have to know who your favorite band or guitar player is; you have to know music in its holy fiber. You have to know who it is you’re emulating, the persona and every chord of their song, plus have the presence of mind to dazzle onlookers.

Since 1996, there have been world championship events hosted from Finland (on five occasions), the U.K., Netherlands, New Zealand, U.S.A. and Japan. Those great nations can’t all be wrong.

Air guitar is most definitely a skill where only those who bash it are the ones who fail to dream big. That, or they just suck at it, one or the other.

No! A monkey could do it.

-- Tom Patrick

We all have those Bill-and-Ted moments where we want to show our excitement and enthusiasm by pretending to play guitar while not actually having a guitar. This shameful, geeky display is called air guitar. It’s actually similar to this skill I have, and have worked at for years, called playing actual guitar. The only difference: everything.

True, the dictionary might define a skill as the ability to do something well, but that’s just it--air guitar requires so little aptitude that everyone short of a one-armed man can do it, making everyone equally as embarrassing to their friends when they do it in public.

We’re talking about playing an instrument that isn’t there! Would you buy your kid air guitar lessons? Would you pass a homeless person on the street who’s petting an imaginary dog and think, damn, that guy is skilled? And if he believes that the dog is really there, does that make him an expert?

On the flip side are mimes, which perform acts that not just anyone can do well. Air guitar as a skill is voided by the fact that everyone can do it and because it’s pretending to do something that requires actual skill. I can breathe well, is that a skill?

Basically, if air guitar is a skill, then so is playing air golf and air driving. And that means that everyone’s résumé is going to explode with all the air-useless-crap that is suddenly listed under the “skills” section, and I’m sure no one wants the competition when applying for that position as air heart surgeon or air-air traffic controller … oops, did I make those up? That’s right, those jobs (minus the “air” at the start) require specific--what should we call them?--oh yeah, skills.

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