A little update on how the finalists are lining up for the final 12 of Guitar Idol.

Great to see that both Jack Thammarat ( my hot tip to win ) and Daniele Gottardo have made the final 12!

Jack Thammarat

Daniele Gottardo

as well as

Ozielzinho

George Marios

With 5 of my faves now in the announced 10 I’m looking forward to seeing the final live!

Been meaning to blog a little snippet I caught in the latest edition of Guitarist Magazine, which reads:

There’s good news for fans of the Guitarist Of The Year competition – previous winners of which include players of the calibre of Guthrie Govan and Dave Kilminster, amongst others. We’ve been considering a practical way to bring it back for a while now and the wheels are in motion for its return in 2010. Watch this space.

A result of the popularity of Guitar Idol? Who knows, but it would be great to see GOTY return! Though would be interesting to see how both GOTY and Guitar Idol would co-exist.

We’ve reached the half-way point and now have six confirmed finalists for the Guitar Idol live Final!

So far we have:

András Pálfi

Great to see three of my faves there! Wonder who will make the last six?

Final is going to be a cracker this year.

So today is the last day of voting for Guitar Idol 2009 with the online vote stopping tonight at 9 pm.

Having a look at the current standings, my faves are currently sitting in the following positions, in descending order:

Hedras Ramos #5, 2205 Votes
Jack Thammarat #10, 748 Votes
Maneli Jamal #11. 718 Votes
Muris Varajic #17, 519 Votes
Daniele Gottardo #45, 177 Votes
Masahiro Aoki #71, 95 Votes
Silvio Gazquez #78, 77 Votes
Tom Quayle #84, 67 Votes

Interesting that only 3 of my favourites are in the top 12, and none are in the top 4. It’s all about the promotion and there is some great promo work being done for those top slots.

Personally I think it’s crazy that Tom Quayle and Gotty seem so low down, but as I’ve mentioned, it’s all very subjective.

For the public vote, the top 4 will go through to the live finals with the judges picking the last 8 to make up the final 12. So it’ll be interesting to see if any more of my faves make it!

Good luck to them all.

Currently going down a storm in the final round of Guitar Idol, Hedras Ramos has teamed up with bluesjamtracks to create the Rock Series 1 jampack:

Let’s hear it for our first special guest from Guatemala! Hedras Ramos might only be 17, but he plays with the feel and confidence of an experienced master. His first bluesjamtracks project features three rock/metal pieces, all with lots of juicy melodies and insanely cool tapping licks. There are two solo jams (Metal Heart and Hard Nut) plus a complete composition, Insanity of the Atoms, which is Hedras’s entry in Guitar Idol 2009. All three tracks come in audio and video form, along with backing tracks and accurate Tab transcriptions. In addition, there are extended jam tracks based on Metal Heart and Hard Nut.