Guitar graduate Matze Wurm has his hands full. Full of a lot of guitar equipment, that is. From Randall Amps to Brian Moore Guitars to Pyramid Stings and Seymour Duncan Pickups, Matze has garnered quite a bit of support from guitar gear companies all over the world.

All of these endorsements have led Matze to a bunch of clinic and trade show opportunities, including the NAMM show in Anaheim, Musikmesse in Frankfurt, and numerous music store clinics in his native Germany. Although he had already received these four endorsements prior to his time at the Academy, Matze notes that "the LA Music Academy really helped me to get in the business in Los Angeles with all these companies, and so I had the chance to play at NAMM for the first time and did some clinics around the area." This chain of events even led to a huge advertisement in the Randall Amps 2004 Product Catalog with Matze standing alongside Good Charlotte, Sevendust, Dimebag, Anthrax, Disturbed, and Drowning Pool. In addition to the Randall catalog, Matze is also featured on all four of his endorsers' websites (www.randallamplifiers.com, www.brianmooreguitars.com, www.seymourduncan.com, and www.pyramid-strings.de).

While the LA Music Academy not only helped bolster Matze's networking in the giant music industry, the small, intimate Academy environment set the stage for him to connect musically and personally with his fellow classmates. He and Alistair Wilson (Guitar, 9/03) met in the guitar program and have since ventured throughout Europe in Matze's band Snailworks. Originally from London, Alistair now regularly travels to Germany for recording sessions and gigs with Matze, in addition to playing together in Snailworks.

Reflecting on his time in the LA Music Academy Guitar Program, Matze says, "the teachers at the LA Music Academy gave me so many more ideas on how to write my songs, how to speed up my technique, how to improvise, and how to handle whatever in music and the music business. Two weeks ago, two students asked me how to play slide guitar. I was so glad that Steve Fister did slide guitar [with us]. And I'm so glad that Bill Fowler [drilled] me in private lessons with sight reading, or otherwise, I wouldn't be able to play a big band job like [I did] three months ago. The LA Music Academy opened the doors for me in the [professional music] business, and that's what I always wanted. Once Frank Gambale said: 'getting a record deal is like winning the lottery, but when you practice and you're going to be good, you'll earn your money in the music biz,' and that's so true!!!"