I have mixed feelings about music contests.

Around 1991 I became friends with a local celebrity named Robin Kessinger. He comes from a musical family and his grandfather has quite a few recordings in the Library of Congress playing old time fiddle music. Robin had won the National Flatpicking Championship once and had placed second and third in that contest. He's also won numerous state championships and various other flatpicking contests around the country.

He started encouraging me to start playing in the contests, but I wasn't initially interested in doing so. At the time I was playing with the local musicians who were into playing the more improvisational jazz influenced New Acoustic/Dawg music. I'd finally worked my way up to playing with the local “big dogs” of the genres.

As winter rolled around, I decided I'd work up some original arrangements to a bunch of my favorite fiddle tunes in case I changed my mind about the flatpicking contests. I incorporated techniques that I rarely used and ended up with arrangements that were far more sophisticated than my usual improvisational fare. In short, I grew as a musician.

So in the spring of 1992, I started playing in guitar flatpicking contests. I played a total of 7 contests that year. I got two 1st places, two 2nd places, one 3rd place and one 4th place. My competitors consisted of previous national champions, state champions and regional champions.

But guess what? I became very stressed out about playing the contests and it ceased to be fun.

On the plus side, I became a better player and learned a lot about arranging.

On the down side, I started dreading the contests.

I didn't play any more guitar contests until my son was 13 or 14 and we played a few just for fun. We managed to pull out a couple of 2nd place and a couple of 3rd place finishes in 5 or 6 contests.

I just enjoyed being on stage with my son.

Bob
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http://soundcloud.com/bobcflatpicke/music-in-the-mountains