GuitarTricks - Mike Olekshy

Mike Olekshy is a new addition to the Guitar Tricks roster. Mike is not only an accomplished rock guitarist he's a veritable encyclopedia of rock music. His passion for rock guitar shines through in his thorough focused insightful lessons. Check out his Iron Maiden artist study and look for more from this talented player soon!
Mike aspired to start playing guitar at 13 years old after hearing the intro to Van Halen's "Aint Talkin 'Bout Love". From there he started learning Deep Purple Iron Maiden Van Halen Rush Judas Priest Led Zeppelin - and all the 80s hair band stuff. Growing up in Vancouver Canada Mike was a member of the progressive rock group 24Unity.

A Pro Tools expert to boot he helped engineer several notable live album and movie sessions. During this time he also was hired as a guitarist on sessions playing numerous TV themes and ad jingles. In 2004 he produced and played guitar on several tracks for the Canadian film "The Delicate Art of Parking". In 2005 he won the Gemini award for Best Sound in a Dramatic Series as the supervising sound designer for Cold Squad VII. The styles MMO plays and is interested in are all the different rock and heavy metal flavors including: classic rock classic metal (Black Sabbath through Metallica) 80s rock 90s grunge modern rock/metal and pop rock. He's also a fan of modern pop country - "Def Leppard with a twang".
Mike has played and shared the stage with many artists over the last 5 years since re-locating to Los Angeles including Mike Keneally Joe Travers Bryan Beller Max Morgan Alison Ray Sarah Hethcoat Alana Stone Touched Mother Eff Mike Stocksdale and others. Currently his time is spent songwriting and producing out of his studio writing recording and producing his own MMO original material. He also composes music for film TV shows and advertising as well as producing other artists.