NOW Considered as FACT! ...Playing air guitar in the shower put's you on your way to becoming the next Jimi Hendrix... 

As it turns out, you actually weren’t wasting your time when you were jumping around your bedroom playing air guitar, according to scientists at Cambridge University!

Strumming an imaginary guitar has long been seen as the wishful domain of the musically talentless. Where rock gods like Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix riff on the real thing, those of us lacking the skill have to make do with our air guitars.


However, those who frequently perform this bizarre act of mimicry can now hold our heads a little higher in light of the results of a new study at Cambridge University.

Studying musicians at the Guildhall School of Music and the Royal College of Music, Cambridge scholars have discovered that the practice of air guitar playing is actual beneficial in helping to exact the skills of aspiring musicians.



Amateurish practices such as singing in the shower can also help musicians come across moments of inspiration, the study has found. Filming professional musicians over extended periods, the academics found that more ‘creative episodes’ occurred when the artists were considering music while away from their instruments.

John Rink, professor of musical performance studies at Cambridge, told The Times that his performance of a nocturne by Frederic Chopin improved after two years without having practiced it on the actual instrument. “Chopin himself was teaching an extremely gifted student, and he banned him from practicing his instrument for two weeks before a performance,” he said.

Professor Rink warned that these discoveries will not let musicians off the hook when it comes to formal practice: “Singing in the shower on its own is not going to be enough to play Rachmaninoff. You do need to do the hard graft.”