Janne "Warman" Wirman (born April, 26 of 1979) is the keyboard player from the bands Children of Bodom and Warmen.

Biography

Originating from the town of Espoo, in Finland, Janne Wirman began playing the piano at the age of five. For a long time he focused his style on jazz, before getting interested in heavy metal.

He attended and graduated from the Helsinki Pop & Jazz Conservatory at the age of sixteen, but lost interest in keyboards and played drums for some time. It was then that he was invited by Jaska Raatikainen to join Children of Bodom, due to Jani Pirisjoki being fired from the band. Janne was the deciding factor for them to truly start their professional career. Not only did he bring his talent and creativity to the band, but after some practice he also became able to play in synchrony with Alexi Laiho; a skill which resulted in many memorable solos. This synchrony can be better observed in their live performaces, or in the album Tokyo Warhearts, on the instrumental track War of Razors.

Drawing is one of his principal hobbies, and he has a lot of interest in architecture. In the future, he considers working with soundtracks for movies and television. He is also a big fan of fast cars, and akin to Alexi, also enjoys fixing and tuning cars.

His primary influence is the keyboard player Jens Johansson from Stratovarius, who also played with two very expressive names of the metal genre: Yngwie Malmsteen and Dio. He has adopted the oddity of tilting his keyboard slightly on-stage from his idol.

In the year of 2000, Janne assembled the speed metal band Warmen, and embraced it as his main side-project. The band's second album counted with the presence of Janne's brother: Antti Wirman .

In that same year, Jens Johansson was asked by the melodic heavy metal band Masterplan to play in their upcoming album, but since he was already busy with other projects, he recommended them to ask Janne instead. Thus, in the year of 2002, Janne took part in the recording of Masterplan's debut album. The band proceeded to invite him to join them permanently, but Wirman opted to continue playing with his friends from Children of Bodom. With bitter resentment, Masteplan released their self-titled album and only gave credit to Janne's work on the CD's booklet. The band's keyboard player (Axel Mackenrott; non-notable) - hired after Janne's refusal to enter the band - appeared in all of the promotional pictures instead, and was credited as Masterplan's keyboardist.

To record with Warmen, Janne built the Warmen Productions Studio (now named Beyond Abilities). This studio has also served for the recording of Kotipelto's keyboard tracks, part of Iron 's instruments and Sinergy's fourth album.

Janne has a bad experience with sponsor deals. He had deals with both Roland Scandinavia and Korg in the past. He was promised new equipment, but he never received anything. That is the reason why he put the following message on the back of Warmen's second album: "No Roland or Korg products were used".

Technical

Throughout most of his career, Janne relied on the X5 keyboard to play live. It is his oldest keyboard and acquired quite a few defects with time, but only around 2002 he bought a replacement keyboard.

Janne's lead sound was crafted by Jens Johansson. It's a Polysix emulation patch Jens made for the JV1080. Janne uses a JV2080. Most of the sounds Janne uses were modulated by himself.

Janne Wirman's setup for the Hate Crew Deathroll recording session

• Macintosh G4 running the DP 3.0 audio recording software
• Roland JV2080 (three keyoboards, using different expansions)
• Akai S5000 and Akai pro synth module
• EMU P2000, Proteus1, e64 and 9090
• Korg Triton rack and X3r