I think computers came first. Or maybe guitar, I can’t remember. A buddy got a Commodore 64 and of course we started writing programs for it. One summer at age fifteen or so, we attended a computer science course at the local university and figured out how to write a terminal-to-terminal chat in FORTRAN on the university UNIVAC mainframe.

I had a 4-track cassette portastudio. A friend, another guitar player, had one too. We recorded lots of weird guitar music together. As soon as I turned 18 and got my driver’s license, I drove to the next town and walked into the office of a company that owned a professional recording studio. “Hi, I want to work for you, I want to be an engineer in your studio”. Amazingly they hired me!

I answered the phone, ran errands and got to assist in the studio and learn from real recording engineers. During the night the studio was all mine to record weird guitar music in. Eventually they trusted me to work with clients by myself. I produced lots of band demos, radio jingles, did some location work, demos, more demos.

The studio went bankrupt. I got a degree in CS and a job developing software for academic neuropsychological research. Toured Finland top to bottom in various bands playing guitar, keys and drums. The digital recording revolution arrived in the form of the Alesis ADAT 8-track recorder. We started an independent record label with my bandmates and bought an ADAT. We recorded lots of demos for bands in diverse genres, our own album and more demos. We built a couple of makeshift recording studios in various locations.

The buddy with a Commodore 64 recruited me to develop software in the software business. Toured the world (well, US and Germany) doing on-location debugging and customer hand-holding for the product we were building. One day I finally found a place where I could build a proper recording studio in the backyard.

Currently I am growing software for a live gig platform at Howl Inc. Always composing and playing guitar for Trusties – a progressive rock band from Finland (progressive = the next album is always in progress). On some nights you might spot me behind Kumu drum kit #85 in a bar somewhere in Oulu, Finland.

— Your host at scribblelayer.com,
Marko Oikarinen