Jethro wrote
(You are the walter whitman of guitar. Your music is chemically pure. Breaking Bad anyone?)
?Que? Walt Whitman or Walter White? ?
briang wrote
How does one apply the Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced catagories?
As
you feel they apply - it might even change depending on style (e.g. I usually fall in advanced, but feel like a total beginner in classic, jazz or shred categories). So you have the freedom to categorise yourself. However, voters also have freedom to recategorize you too - if you enter as a beginner but produce a meisterwerk, don't be surprised if you find you end up swimming in the deep end with the bigger kids.
Recording shouldn't matter - it doesn't officially, but from experience I can say it
will influence people. Production not so much - as with any music, a single guitar and voice can elicit just as powerful a response on the listener as a 200-piece orchestral arrangement (but then, production is deciding which will work
best for a specific piece of music).
Music these days is a combination of skills and modern tools allow
anyone to play, perform, produce, record, mix, master and even market music. The downside is that even the most humble muso (or group of musos, more likely) needs to have
some skills in
each of those areas to produce music. You don't have to be an expert in any one area (though it helps), but you do need a decent overview. And if you have the full house (the ability to do all of these things well), the world is your oyster. The challenges allow you to exercise and improve any or all of these skills.
