Naga lad wins international solo guitar contest

Our Reporter
Dimapur, Aug. 21 (EMN): Arenlong Longkumer from Mokokchung district was declared winner of the ‘Jack Gardinar Solo Competition’ on Friday. He also won the ‘Strandberg India Guitar Contest’ in May this year.

A prominent guitarist from the United Kingdom, Gardinar had asked his fans to upload a video of them playing a solo guitar rift over one of his songs.

“Jack Gardinar is an amazing guitarist and artist, who just released his EP called ‘Escapades.’ He also initiated the contest for us to play over one of his songs called ‘Lark Lane’,” Longkumer told Eastern Mirror over a telephonic interview.

Longkumer informed that he knew about the competition since he follows Gardinar on various social media platforms.

He informed that there were more than 200 entries for the competition from guitarist all over the world.

“I am happy I get to enter these contests especially because this pandemic has really helped me to spend time on the instrument and learn new things,” Longkumer shared, adding that there were three winners in the contest altogether.

Longkumer, who has also done M.Phil in linguistics, said that he did not have any formal musical theory or practical classes.

“Apart from a short spell with formal classical guitar classes, I didn’t study music or get a degree in it,” said Longkumer.

Longkumer informed that Gardiner, in collaboration with Neural DSP, had awarded the winners with two guitar VST plugins.

While declaring the winners of the contest in a YouTube video, Gardinar expressed happiness at the sheer level and consistency of the winners.

“The diversity of the playing and the diversity of the people playing over my track has blown me away,’ said Gardener. Speaking about Longkumer’s skills in the video, Gardinar hailed him as a “super tasty” guitar player.

“It was the way in which the solo floats. He showed real taste in his phrasing. He is mature and vibrato is good; Arenlong you are really really good….” exclaimed Gardiner in the video.