Finnish guitarist Mika Tyyskä, creator of MR. FASTFINGER and The Guitar Shred Show animated guitar tutorial site featuring Mr. Fastfinger, recently wrote a guest column for Guitar9.com. It focuses on mind game methods for creating the right solo for a song. An excerpt is available below.

"About a year ago I was working on the final recordings of Mr. Fastfinger's album The Way Of The Exploding Guitar. One of the songs, 'Creatures Of The Midnight' had recently went though a dramatic re-arrangement editing. Now suddenly there was one more guitar solo to record.

I set up an audio sequencer to loop the backing of the solo and started improvising on the guitar. I think I spent at least an hour or more, testing out different ideas, tones and effects. Nothing felt right for the song and part, and I slowly started feeling hopeless with the case. I then rememebered seeing a clip of Mark Knopfler's (from DIRE STRAITS) live concert on TV about a week earlier. I now felt his playing would fit the song perfectly.

Enter Mr. Mika Konplerf!

I didn't start booking sessions with Mr. Knopfler. But things started really happening once I got the idea of trying to play like him. I never owned any of his records, and only had heard him occationally on radio and TV. And I never checked out any of his licks (except for the arpeggios on 'Sultains Of Swing'), but I had some kind of idea what his tone is like. So I threw away my guitar pick and started exploring the guitar bare fingered. Two or three improvisation takes, then the rest followed automatically. It was just a matter of hearing the melodies inside my head and delivering them out thought the instrument. Wooosh!"

Go to this location for the complete article. It includes the transcription, audio and analysis of the 'Creatures Of The Midnight' solo. For jamming purposes a special backing loop available here.