GC King of the Blues 2009 - Preliminary Round 1 Denver, CO - Frederick Matzen - 08/20/2009

Not my best performance but good enough to get me to the Store Finals on Sept. 10, 2009. I'm now one of 1284 guitar players who will advance. There are 214 Guitar Center stores, each who had the potential of 30 players competing. That's 6,420 total guitar players in the competiton (if they all showed up). It was fun and I was surprised when I was announced as first place that night. There were some good players. Store finals should be tough but it will get MUCH tougher the further you advance. I hope I find out!

Keep in mind that everyone who entered had to choose a backing track from a list of 25 and jam over it. None of these are actual songs (at least in my case) so don't expect to hear anything familiar. It just a way to show off your skills.

I'm playing my trusty purple Ibanez RG into Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3/Kontrol 3 on my laptop then running into the stores Vox AC-30. I REALLY like this combination! I use a Line 6 Flextone in my normal rig but I like this better I think. Have to save up for one of these.

My awesome wife shot the video and my great kids, Sara (8) and Matthew (4) were there too. Sara thinks she's my good luck charm now. I'll go with that anytime.

Time to go practice and find my long lost callouses...

Category:

Music

Tags:

• guitar
• guitar center
• king of the blues
• blues
• ibanez
• native instruments
• guitar rig
• guitar rig 3
• kontrol
• vox
• ac-30
• vox ac-30
• frederick matzen
• virtual amp
• line 6
• guitar player

[DeltaDregs]

How far is your store from Estes Nat'l Pk?

We will be up there on the 10th, so I'm dropping out of the store finals I guess. Maybe I'll come down and watch you?

Good Luck!

 greg

[SciFiBlues]

That sucks that you have to drop out. Of course Estes Park is quite nice (although a definite tourist trap). I'm sure Rocky Mountain National Park is one of your tour stops but if not you should add it. And try to catch the elk bugling at either dawn or dusk. Its pretty cool too.

Estes Park is a couple of hours from Denver so it may not be worth the trip unless you want to spend a day or two in Denver,You would have to see world famous Red Rocks amphitheater if you end coming down this far.

[brownbigb]

it's 6420. gotta check your math. your playing is better than your math:)

[SciFiBlues]

Yeah probably. I was tired when I posted that. Thatnks for the correction.

[DeltaDregs]

Estes Pk. was a lot of fun. Caught the elk bugling 2 different mornings. Wonderful country up there!

So how did you do Thurs?

All the best.

Delta Dreg

[Peelick]

Good stuff as well!! Good luck to you.......!!

[EyeRiskDesign]

Really, REALLY nice stuff. Nice to see that someone didn't just copy B.B. and did their own thing.

[carloswalter1975]

Very nice! Glad to hear you're through to the finals. I passed, too (check out my vid).

[rocknfenderguy]

nice dude! It may not be outside like ours, but it's cool that they actually announced your influences.