Blind-Summit
THE GUITAR PLAYERS COMMUNITY

When I first spoke to you back in February, you were busy getting the CD ready to be published and released. How are you feeling now that it’s all done?

I feel very glad that I finally made this. It was like a 20 year old dream to do an instrumental guitar album. Had so much fun making it and learned a lot during the process. Also feel like I succeded to create the album that I was initially aiming to do. I’m very glad that I was able to get it all together and done. I thank Mr. Fastfinger everyday for giving me the chance to produce his solo album!

I have had the album for a few days now, and it’s just amazing. The tracks really fit well together and you have created a sound that is technical but also really interesting. It has elements of the Far East as well as a tribal theme. Could you talk us through that, and how it has formed the overall sound for the album?

First of all designing and planning this album was very inspiring. Seems that this little sensei character is a endless source of fun ideas and potential projects. I didn’t really come up with an actual concept story for the album. Decided that the tracks would simply illustrate the character and his world. Tell little stories instead of one feature lenght story.

I’m a great fan of instrumental music. In addition to guitar music I listen to a lot of film soundtracks, ethnic music and classical, and so on. For this album I wanted to bring all kind of elements that I inspiring.

I work on music pretty much the same way as I do when working on graphics. I love mixing techniques, mixing styles.

I worked with real drummer and bass player to get the human touch, and warmness to the tracks. Getting musicians to play on the tracks not only gave me better sounds but they also brought the music to the next level. In addition to live drums I also like to use a lot of percussion. There are layers and layers of percussion loops going on in many songs. Vintage and analog type of synthesizer sounds seem to fit Fastifinger’s world perfectly. Also used some ethnic sounds from sample workstations.

A lot of time was spent on recording the guitars. I wanted to make sure that there was always interesting stuff happening for the listener. I didn’t want the whole album to be just high speed guitar freak soloing. I believe in good melodies. There needs to be colors and contrasts, shapes and patterns just like in visual arts. For the guitar tones I worked long and hard. Different tones, effects and playing styles keep the listener awake and interested. Everything always depends on the song and it’s mood. If you know the story your trying to tell, it’s much easier to find the right tone and playing style that supports the scene.

Even did some mind tricks there. With the solo on "Creatures of the Midnight" I was very lost at first. Tried all effects and everything, but I could get the right feel there. Then remembered a Mark Knopfler concert I had seen on TV few days earlier. Felt that his playing style could fit the mood. There was no time to call Mark. So I pretended I was him, throw away my pick, focused on finger picking and recorded my magic solo. I don’t think the solo sounds at all like Mr. Knopfler, but it was very inpiring to try this approach on this solo.

What comes to the overall album. I was very interested in getting the album in right balance. I wanted to have the focus on rocking music, but keep it versatile and multi layered. I wanted each song to be different from each other. Pull different influences, feelings and ideas to the tracks. To me there’s nothing more boring than albums with all songs sounding exactly the same with each other. The right song order is also essential for the overall listening experience.

Is there anyone in particular that has been an influence on you and the album, maybe family and friends or perhaps another band or artist?

In general I can say there’s a zillion of things that has inspired my work here. I can’t really name certain one name, except Mr. Fastfinger. But of course there are lot of inpiration from various artists. From my early guitar hero influences to more recent music and discoveries. For example one of my favourite film composers, Philip Glass inspired me on "Goldfish". All those repeating patterns!

You have worked with Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater) and Mattias IA Eklundh on the album. That must have been pretty special? How did you work out what each of them were going to play - or did you just let them go wild?!

Getting Jordan Rudess to play on "Big Trummors" was a huge honour. He seriously took the track to higher levels. Originally it was just going to be a guitar leads only tracks. I came up with the idea of inviting Jordan to play on some track on the album. And realised Big Trummors would be a perfect scene for dialog between Mr. Fastfinger and Keyboard Wizard. I recorded Mr. Fastfinger’s parts first, then sent files to Rudess and just gave him simple instructions on where to do his thing.

Hearing Jordan’s parts for the very first time was a little shock. Suddenly my composition that I had been working for long time had dramatically changed. Took me couple of rounds of listening before I understood how perfectly Jordan’s lead fit the track. The only problem was that he made Fastfinger sound more like a slowfinger!

I was working on a ninja tune that had a lot of open space for guitar solos. The thought of getting several guitar playing guest ninjas felt like a very fun idea. So I asked three guitar player friends to do the ninja!

Mattias Eklundh was somebody who got me re-inspired of guitar playing when I was studying multimedia. I listened to his Freak Guitar CD’s when working on the initial Guitar Shred Show animations. It’s more than amazing to get somebody you would concider one of your guitar gods to play on your music.

Then there’s Christophe Godin, he’s definetly also one of my favourite guitar player these days. I simply love his wild energy and feel and humor. And Niko Tsonev, a very cool player from UK with very bold techniques and attitude!

It was slightly challanging to figure out how to fit each player onto one song. But each got their places to showcase their special jutsus. I simply sent them the backing track along with a structure map with each players spot marked in time. When the whole song was finished I ended up splitting it to two pieces. It was better for the overall drama of the album this way I think.

You have been playing some live shows to promote the new CD - has that been hard work or a lot of fun?

Previously I’ve only played Mr.Fastfinger material live together with a backing DVD or audio. Doing this mostly in trade shows or similar events. But we did our first live band experiment recently in Finland. We only had only one rehearsals together before the show. But from the very first bars we played togerther I knew it works beautifully. It was amazing to hear how the songs became alive with the right musicians.

Some of the tracks we played were played together in sync with DVD to get Mr. Fastfinger involved. With these musician we also added new exteneded parts to many of the tunes. I feel that improvising is the thing that makes live playing much more exciting for the performers and the audience.

Firstly the main tool for the job is your guitar "Qian", designed and built by you and Ben Reuters. Can you tell us how you managed to get a custom model guitar, and what are the features that you asked for?

Ben e-mailed me. He was excited about Mr. Fastfinger and simply wanted to help bringing the cartoon guitar to life. I naturally became interested in such a project. We started from scratch.

I’ve been playing strat type of guitar for the whole past. Even played a Ibanez Jem for years, my main guitar those days was Fender Stratocaster. So I basically wanted to combine the best sides of classic strat and modern super strat. We designed the guitar together with Ben. He is obviously more experienced on woods and such stuff, so I trusted his opinions on such things. What’s cool about the guitar is the body shape, it’s very much the same that was the original cartoon drawings on the website. I had gotten very tired of locking tuners, changing strings was simply too difficult and slow. Wilkinson VS100 tremolo together with locking tuners was the solution to my tremolo problems. The guitar has humbucers that you can split for single-coil tones. The pickups on my Qian are Dimarzio Evolution on bridge and Seymour Duncan Alnico II pro on neck. I also have a 7-string Qian, with a very cool burned and waxed wood finish on the body. Designing your own guitar is a dream come true, especially when the actualy guitar plays and sounds like a dream.

You also get some of your great sounds through the G-system by TC electronic. How has that helped to define your own sound?

The effects can bring the electric guitar player to another level. I try to use effect to add variation and depth to the sound make it more interesting to the listener. Sometimes I might not use effects at all. Sometimes I want to get crazy with em. Effects are tools of expression and can make your music sound much richer. And with G-system you can go as crazy you like. Everything is programmable and controllable real time.

There’s a lot of thing happening inside G-system that the listener might not notice but what makes a huge difference in tone or simply makes the life easier. Programmable eqs and gate are very handy in tone shaping. Also the loops for inserting your favourite overdrive pedals to the setup. I also use it to control the amplifier. Now I have my G-system in a compact case with wheels. I just need to open the box, connect few cables to the amp and I’m ready to rock. It seems that G-system is the endless box of candy.

The other main bit of equipment would be your Hughes and Kettner amps. You also keep pooping up at guitar shows on their stalls. What is it like to be recognised as an endorsee of a big name amplifier?

I simply feel very happy, lucky and humble. I love the amps, and everything about them. The tone is absolutely killer great and amp work like a dream.

I love playing both TriAmp and Switchblade amplifiers. TriAmp is perhaps more in studio use and Switchblade I love to play live. TriAmp has everything from the coolest clean tones to heavymetal thunder. Switchblade is very easy to use and programmable. I can just plug the guitar straight in and I get all the screaming overdrive tones I ever need. Burning! Doing tradeshows for Hughes & Kettner is no doubt very exciting and fun. I think it’s only cool to do the 15 - 20 minutes demo show for three or four times a day. Also it has been a great honour to play alongside the great Thomas Blug, the true stratocaster master. Makes me humble.

Do you play any other instruments?

I whistle a little.

It seems a rather compulsory question to ask, but what got you into playing guitar? Was there a band in particular that made you say "I want to do that"?

As a kid I had a cheesy keyboard I got as a christmas present, but my big brother had a guitar. For some reason when he wasn’t around I kept sneaking into his room and explore his cheep stratocaster. I sucked at school, I sucked at sports. Now I felt that there was finally a thing I could be good at.

You are also a talented multimedia designer and as well as creating Mr Fastfinger, you have worked on some cool multimedia projects like the animation for Dream Theater’s "Octivarium". Are you planning any other projects in the near future?

Mr. Fastifinger is my pet project and character. But to be able to make my living I need to do some real work too. Some projects like working for Dream Theater or Jordan Rudess can be very rewarding and inspiring. I work on multimedia projects all the time. But most of the time I work on projects that are absolutely not interesing to guitar playing fans of Mr. Fastfinger. Luckily my working life is quite versatile. I might be scoring music for a short film one day and designing a website the next day, do a gig on the weekend. But it can be very challenging at times.

You devote a lot of time to GuitarShredShow with the animations and the mode lessons - is this something you will expand and add more lessons to?

Absolutely. I will definetly expand GuitarShredShow or Mr. Fastfinger’s animated life in the future aswell. It’s just many times just much harder to find the budget for your pet projects. One unreleased lesson for Guitar Shred Show, “Sky Burn” will probably be released later this year. It’s a project that was initally as an installation. We’ve been working on turning it into web friendly format. There’s also other lessons I’m planning to do.

When you’re not designing and playing guitar, what do you do to relax and get away from it all?

Just became a father of a baby girl. I spend time with the family. Watch a movie. Take a walk in the forest. Breath and joga!

Where is Tilulitu Land and what is it like?

It’s a fantasy island in the other dimention. A place where nothing is disturbing your from guitar playing. The only access there I know can be found though Guitarshredshow.com.

Finally, what’s next for you and Mr Fastfinger?

We have a cool little instructional series thing planned as our next project. Won’t reveal too much about it yet. In the mean time we continue doing workshops for Modern Music School in germany. Hopefully some gigs with the live band. Most important I’m trying to figure out how to develop my playing into something new. Slowly start working on the next album too I guess?

Mika, thanks so much for your time. I look forward to talking with you again soon.