Tomi Paldanius (born February 17th, 1976 in Uusikaupunki, Finland) is an Finnish fingerstyle guitar player.
Life and career
Paldanius played his first guitar at age 13. A Landola nylon string which was hanging on the home wall. Guitar did not have all the strings and Tomi made the missing bridge bone from ice cream stick. Paldanius began teaching himself how to play the guitar from the material he borrowed from the local library. His interested was mainly rock music. At 14 he got his first electric guitar which was Tokai stratocaster. Tomi grew up listening AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Kingston Wall and many classic rock bands.
After playing electric guitar couple years Tomi wanted to have formal guitar training and studied classical guitar in Vakka-Suomen Musiikkikoulu with Risto Vuorinen. After military service Tomi began his professional studies at Music Academy Of Turku with Timo Korhonen and Ismo Eskelinen. Tomi graduated 2003 and continued his studies brief moment at University Of Turku until 2005. During the studies Tomi also toured with a show band Dr.Doctor playing electric guitar.
2005 Tomi rebooted his life selling his belongins, quitting his job and breaking with his girl friend. He took a flight to New York and traveled across the USA with a train. With no real purpose for the trip Tomi met people, played guitar in music stores, parks, train stations etc. He arranged Bon Jovi - Livin' On A Prayer for fingerstyle guitar during that trip which was one of the first YouTube guitar videos and was chosen best of Youtube by Total Guitar Magazine. That song and many other arrangements created friendships and connections with guitar players all around the world.
Tomi was arranging Tommy Emmanuel's first visits to Finland 2006. Since then Tomi has arranged festivals and concerts for many top players.
Tomi lives in Bangkok, Thailand.
Teaching career
Tomi has been teaching since he was 17 years old. Tomi's approach for learning has changed dramatically after meeting his hero and main influence Tommy Emmanuel. Like Tommy, Tomi does not use any written notation learning music. Developing his hearing and logical thinking has helped Tomi creating his ability learning music quickly just by listening. Tomi is spreading this natural way of learning with his online courses and master classes.
Youtube
Youtube has played a big part in Tomi's career. User "Weba" uploaded Tomi's vidoe to YouTube on December 25th, 2005 and it was covered by a young Korean guitarist Sungha Jung. Tomi sent an email to Sungha through YouTube and got an answer from a translator who told that Sungha and his parents are glad about the message but none from the family speak any English. Tomi wanted to meet Sungha and flew to meet him on January 2009.
Tomi Paldanius - Livin' On A Prayer (December 2005)
Sungha Jung - Livin' On A Prayer (July 2007)
Sungha and many other guitar players have played many of Tomi's arrangements. You can watch few from below: