Teemu Mäntysaari is one half of the blazing guitar assault in the band Wintersun. With founder and vocalist Jari Mäenpää, he weaves punishing rhythms and intricate dual-lead flights of fantasy into epic power metal soundscapes.

When he’s not melting faces on the stage and filling hard disks in the studio, Teemu molds minds as a teacher in Helsinki and on the road. Of particular interest to Cracking the Code fans, this has included extensive work teaching pickslanting mechanics to guitarists of all levels.

In our talk, Teemu graciously shares his personal strategies for teaching pick grip and pickslanting interaction, converting students from one pickslant to another, using two-way pickslanting for arpeggio sweeping, maintaining tight hand synchronization through sweeps, and lots more.

Teemu’s dual perspective as both a player and a teacher is rare for a number of reasons. He has achieved, and continues to develop, an impressive level of personal mastery of the techniques. He has applied that mastery as a working professional in an internationally successful band. And he has somehow also found the time to develop insightful educational approaches for a technical discipline that didn’t even really exist a few years ago. Teemu’s work is an exciting model for how mechanical learning can happen in a new era driven by observation, testing, and student feedback, and we are thrilled that he was able to sit down with us.