WATCH: Simulated strumming returns to Finland for Air Guitar World Championships

"They housed the first air guitar championships out of the belief that if everybody would just pick up an air guitar and put down the guns, then the climate would change, war would end, and all good things would happen if everybody would just party and have some fun," Matt Airistotle Burns, the world champion for 2016 and 2017, told NPR.

Technical skills and 'airness'

Justin "Nordic Thunder" Howard, the 2012 air guitar world champion who was named champion of champions in the virtual 2021 event, serves as a judge in this year's competition. Howard said he already knew how to play a real guitar -- known to air guitarists as a there-guitar -- when he learned about air guitar competitions.

"It is ridiculous. It is as silly and absurd as it sounds," Howard told WBUR radio's Here & Now. In fact, that's why I wanted to start being an air guitarist to begin with, because I saw that this thing existed and I'm like, 'That is the stupidest thing ever. I want to be the best in the world at that.'

Howard and his fellow judges will be ranking each competitor in categories including technical merit. Howard said that while the competitors are merely pretending to play the guitar, there are technical aspects to the performance.

"High notes on a guitar are played very low on the neck of the guitar itself. So if you're trying to emulate the actual sounds that a there-guitar makes, you're going to play those high notes further down on the neck or the low notes further up on the neck. Those are the things that you want to take into consideration when looking for something technical," he said.

The other categories of judging are stage presence -- the ability to entrance a crowd -- and "airness." US Air Guitar, the organization that runs the national championship in the United States, says airness is the most difficult to define yet often the most decisive of all the categories.

"Airness is defined as the extent to which a performance transcends the imitation of a real guitar and becomes an art form in and of itself," US Air Guitar's website states.

The Air Guitar World Championships begins at 8 p.m. local time -- 1 p.m. Eastern Time -- in Oulu, Finland. The competition will be livestreamed on the contest's official website.