By Fredrick Kunkle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 2, 2006; B02
Matthew Baamonde can play electric guitar like Eddie Van Halen, plucking and tapping the strings in demonic bursts of virtuosity that heavy metal fans call shredding. He can coax lyrical riffs from Eric Clapton on his acoustic guitar. And he can finger scales like Yngwie Malmsteen.
Yngwie? Malmsteen?
Now, after years in his Herndon bedroom imitating Malmsteen -- a Swedish guitarist who translates Bach and other classical composers into heavy metal music -- Baamonde, 19, is getting a moment of fame.
American Idol Underground, an online spinoff of the wildly popular TV talent show, announced yesterday that two of Baamonde's tracks made the Top 10 in the rock division. Using his bedroom in Herndon as a recording studio, Baamonde entered "White Noise" (No. 2) and "Amplifire" (No. 4).
"It was exciting," Baamonde said, although he said he was also a little disappointed because for a while -- right up until the voting closed, it seemed -- his submissions had been ranked first and second in the standings. "But, I feel, congratulations to the guys that won. I'll take second place."
Since its launch last fall, American Idol Underground has sponsored frequent competitions. Its biggest so far was its latest, the "Big Push," and it plans to divvy up $200,000 and more in prizes to the top finishers in 13 genres.
The site guarantees each would-be rock star at least 200 plays on an online music player. It gets as many as 1 million unique visitors a month and has registered more than 50,000 artists.
For musicians hoping to be discovered by their peers, the site has become an attention-getting forum in the free-for-all world of digitalized music where the mob -- and the single hit -- rule.
"What we are really all about is getting your music heard," said Justin Beckett, 43, chief executive of Los Angeles-based Fluid Audio Networks, which produces American Idol Underground. "We're all about giving emerging artists feedback."
The firm licensed the American Idol brand name, as Fox did, for an undisclosed amount. The Internet company's platform is similar to Myspace.com and other social-networking sites. But the Idol site is devoted solely to entertainment. For $25, an artist can upload a song.
Baamonde -- with his long, open face, sideburns creeping below the ears and a stubby goatee -- looks a little like Jesus or Frank Zappa.
He plays electric guitar, though, as if he had made a deal with the devil -- that is, if the devil wanted to fiddle around with heavy metal, classical, jazz and rock-and-roll riffs at the computer in a teenager's bedroom. Posters of "The Clash" and "System of a Down" dot the walls. There is a shelf with rows of thrillers and baseball trophies from boyhood teams; plastic models of the creature from the movie "Alien" mass atop his dresser.
Sitting a few feet from a neatly made bunk bed, Baamonde plugs his guitar into the hard drive of a system he customized. Then, staring at the computer monitor, he toys with different licks on the guitar. Digital pictograms of each sound sweep across the screen like squiggles from a cardiogram. He records them, modifies them and layers in other preprogrammed tracks such as drums.
There are days when he eats breakfast, says good morning to his parents and disappears into his room to practice.
"He could easily spend six to eight hours a day in there if he doesn't have school," said his father, Richard Baamonde.
The teenager has a hard time explaining why he plays.
"You just do it," he said. "You feel it in every part of you when you play. It's the one place where you're clear. I have so many distractions. It's the only place you can be in the moment."
Those distractions, besides American Idol Underground, include school at George Mason University and work.
At the Guitar Center in Fairfax, Baamonde (pronounced ba-MOND-ee) works in the accessories department. He wears chinos, work boots and a pink-striped aubergine shirt; his left ear carries five hoop earrings. Here, Baamonde is lord of fuzz pedals and other electronic doodads that only an electric guitarist or an electrical engineer could love, the guy to go to with questions about guitar strings and Rush DVDs.
"Thanks, man -- you were a big help," says a guy named Steve after he finishes noodling around with a Line 6 POD XT Live Amp Modeler Pedal.
Baamonde's first instrument was the cello, which he took up in third grade. But he never much liked classical music.
Even his parents thought he could use a change, so they supported his interest in the guitar and got him lessons.
"He was such a quiet kid that my wife and I thought we should do something to cool him up," said his father, who manages a telecommuting center in Reston.
When Baamonde left cello for guitar, though, he took with him its brutally difficult fingerings and a fine vibrato -- the quivering wrist and finger motions that make the tone of the instrument flutter like a human voice.
When he started Oakton High School, he wanted to be an architect. Then he took a music and technology course at Fairfax High School through the county's "academy class" program in his junior year, and everything changed. Only music mattered.
After graduating in 2005, Baamonde attended George Mason University and started working at the Guitar Center. This fall, he plans to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Like his idol Malmsteen, Baamonde's works are sort of like audio crossword puzzles played at supersonic speed.
His father thinks the Idol competition will fit nicely with the musical résumé his son is building. He lists accomplishments his son never bothers to mention: a partial scholarship from the National Guitar Workshop, an offer lined up through the Guitar Center to do some studio work for the same musicians who produced the NASCAR theme.
Meanwhile, Baamonde works on a new song, "Hopeless Romantic," and dreams of becoming the next Yngwie Malmsteen.