No, this isn’t a competition for the Guitar Hero video game. We’re talking about real guitars in a competition at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco that is to be judged by six celebrity judges, i.e. Joe Satriani, Steve Lukather, Ritchie Kotzen, Rafael Moreira, Shredmistress Rynata and Steve Read.

The 10 finalists are:

• David Powers (Brewster, New York)
• Sergei Roudzinski (Russia)
• Patrick Woods (Winona Lake, Indiana)
• Joe Cefalu (Boise, Idaho)
• Ed DeGenaro (Seattle, Washington)
• Trey Alexander (Lancaster, Pennsylvania)
• Josh Karickhoff (New York, New York)
• Anton Tsygankov (St. Peters, Missouri)
• Ron LoCurto (Kenmore, New York)
• Nathan Hahn, (Waxahachie, Texas)

If you’re interested in watching the event, you might want to book tickets online.

[News via Guitar Player]

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Few gamers on any side of the Earth haven’t heard of Guitar Hero, i.e. the first guitar game to gather such a large fanbase. And few from such a large fanbase haven’t heard of its sequel, Guitar Hero II, which is due for a US tour on the PS2 platform in November 2006.

Anyway, enough of my crap and back to the point. RedOctane, Guitar Hero’s publisher, has launched Be a Guitar Hero II - the second installment of a worldwide competition that offers musicians a chance to have their song featured in Guitar Hero II. And in featured, I mean that gamers will actually be able to play that song on their PS2s as part of gameplay.

But a couple of requirements first. Songs submitted for the competition must be original and must fall in the hard rock or heavy metal genres. That’s about it. Now all that’s left to make sure of is that your song gets submitted by 11:59pm PST on the 30th of June, 2006.

So… to aspiring winners, good luck and have fun!

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