ika Tyyska, better known as “Mr. Fastfinger”, is a finnish guitar player, songwriter and showman that made his way into the
spotlight creating the virtual character, "Mr. Fastfinger", a mythical guitar samurai shred sensei that has 5 studio productions and one live show under his belt, and a website where he teaches free lessons in a fun way, licks and workouts to develop speed on the guitar in a manner of a videogame.
GUITAR SAMURAI SHRED SENSEI
The track that made me start following Mika's work was about 10 years ago, during a Dream Theater concert in Mexico City. Mika was in charge of some of the animations and cartoons that the progressive metal band from Long Island used durng their shows.
I was hooked with his visuals, and not until his live DVD "SCORE" did I know the name of the artist, I then followed his work and was surprised of the excelent guitarist and probably one of the best melodic songwriters out there today.
THE WEBSITE
The name of the website is “Guitar Shred Show”, a flash based webpage where we can follow "Mr. Fastfinger" on his guitarristic adventures, where discipline and practice help us conquer the challenges that the sensei comes upon. The challenges vary and the website is very diverse, from licks that develop speed to a journey through the seven mods of the major scale on a flying carpet operated by a multi-effects "G-System" from TCElectronics, who is the sponsor of that particular section.
The website was a huge hit during 2006-2008, before the mobile divices era based on HTML5, getting millions of visits throughout the world.
MUSICAL DEBUT AND WORKING WTH H&K
In 2009 he started his musical carreer with his debut album "The Way of the Exploding Guitar", a fun and exciting production full of colors that note his clear oriental influence. His productions are not your typical instrumental shred guitar material. The sound is truely unique, mixing synthesized sounds and textures as well as unusual intruments that show Mika's creativity.
That same year he started working as an endorsee of the german amplifire manufacturer Hughes and Kettner, whith whom he has made entertaining tutorial videos like "how to record without waking up the neighbors".
Mika's carreer with "Mr. Fastfinger" has been very interesting as well as eclectic, as we can surely testify through his video series "The Spirit of the Guitar Hunt", a sort of short film divided in episodes where he mixes live action and cartoons to demonstrate the path that Fastfinger has to take to build his custom guitar by famed finnish louthier Juha Roukangas.
Something that denotes "Mr. Fastfinger" is the list of musicians who have collaborated with him. Mattias la Eklundh from Freak Kitchen, Jordan Rudess from Dream Theater and Christophe Godin, to name a few.
We can also point out that Mika has shared the stage with great guitarrists like Uli Jon Roth.
ARTIST PROFILE:
Mr. Fastfinger
Mika Tyyska, better known as “Mr. Fastfinger”, is a finnish guitar player, songwriter and showman.
JAN/FEB 2017 | GuitarraMX | 7
By Dave Cortés
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