Polyphia with Vai

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Surveyor 777

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I guess I'm just old or something. Have been listening to shred guitar since the late 80's and kind of get burnt out on it. That's why I love Polyphia - to me, they're just completely different. Yes, they play fast but it is...different. I can listen to their albums and they all sound different to me. It's that anticipation of what they're going to put out next that keeps me coming back. It does get "old" after a while, but it's nice to intersperse this with the other guitar-based music I listen to.

I love this song. Especially since it has Vai in it (favorite guitarist since "Flex-able" came out).
 

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Sermo Lupi

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I guess I'm just old or something. Have been listening to shred guitar since the late 80's and kind of get burnt out on it. That's why I love Polyphia - to me, they're just completely different. Yes, they play fast but it is...different. I can listen to their albums and they all sound different to me. It's that anticipation of what they're going to put out next that keeps me coming back. It does get "old" after a while, but it's nice to intersperse this with the other guitar-based music I listen to.

I love this song. Especially since it has Vai in it (favorite guitarist since "Flex-able" came out).

I get the opposite impression, personally. I've never heard anything from Polyphia that stands out as genre-defining. Most of the novelty surrounding their music seems to be that they play on the clean channel.

If anything, I'd say a lot of people reserve criticism because they don't want to be called "boomers" who aren't open-minded about guitar music trying something new. It's a prejudice as generic as old people complaining about kids. Ironically, I never took to Polyphia's music specifically because it sounds spastic to me in the same way some older guitar-based music did. Not every guy banging on his acoustic was Don Ross, nor was every player ripping solos in Phrygian dominant Yngwie Malmsteen.

I'd love to know what shred guitar is as a genre anyway. Yngwie had a band and produced some incredible albums. Vai was very musically unique, to the point his reputation is simultaneously that of a shred guitar god and someone who has nothing to do with shred music. We could go through the whole gamut of players here, but the point is that, at some point, "shred" just became a synonym for "bad" and any good music that came out of that genre was declassified as shred by virtue of it being good.

To flip that back around, novelty isn't quality. It's cool that Polyphia is trying something new, but no one here needs to be embarrassed about disliking it. Maybe something cool emerges from this genre someday, but for me this isn't it.
 

CanserDYI

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Okay I finally listened to it, it was actually better than I expected for my tastes which is weird.

What I didn't expect is Mr LePage coming out with that Xiphos?? Damnnnnnnnn.
 

7stringDemon

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Kind of cool. I was hoping Vai would take a few leaves from Polyphia's book and try something new, but it just ended up being Polyphia with a Vai solo in it.

But I guess you dont hire Steve Vai to be on your track if you dont want it to sound like Steve Vai, so there's that to consider too.
 

Hollowway

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I’m actually surprised that more people on here don’t like Polyphia. I absolutely love their stuff since Levels/Devils. For me it hits all the stuff I love about newer music - syncopation, novel techniques, and lower than traditional tuning. Oddly, I find their stuff prior to that album boring, specifically because it lacked that stuff.
 

Flappydoodle

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You know music videos have been miming and pretending since forever right? :lol:
Yes of course I know that. But for some reason this video was particularly obnoxious. This one is almost to the point of parody, with the facial expressions, exaggerated body language etc, with the full view blatantly showing the empty output jack.
 
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50 seconds in, and all I can think about is how squeaky clean the production is. The guitars are so heavily edited that they might as well have been programmed. I feel like that is the whole reason the song doesn't click with a lot of people. Music is about invoking emotions, right. Clean electric and acoustic guitars are pretty well established by the masses as *the* way of channelling emotion through the instrument. So it comes off as disingenuous when all the feel has been edited away. It does sound a lot like Polyphia made with the latest guitar VSTi.

That said, Scotty's guitar solo was dope. Vai's parts were cool and very Vai. The last 1/3rd was definitely my favorite part.
 

Hollowway

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Anybody noticed any boomer bends?
It's funny, because I hadn't actually heard the term "Boomer bends" until in this thread. But idk, I like to bend, AND I'm tryna learn this gaht-dang thumping thing everyone since Tosin is doing. I'm Gen X, though, so maybe I'm allowed to like both? :lol:
 

Lemonbaby

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50 seconds in, and all I can think about is how squeaky clean the production is. The guitars are so heavily edited that they might as well have been programmed.
Plot twist! It's all just programmed and the funky hipsters were casted by the record company.

BTW, am I the only one thinking Tim Henson needs a high five?
 

ShredmasterD

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It's funny, because I hadn't actually heard the term "Boomer bends" until in this thread. But idk, I like to bend, AND I'm tryna learn this gaht-dang thumping thing everyone since Tosin is doing. I'm Gen X, though, so maybe I'm allowed to like both? :lol:
bends are part of the the guitar vocabulary. to omit them only truncates the players ability for expression. it's not a well thought out derogatory term used by confused gen z'ers
 

Sermo Lupi

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bends are part of the the guitar vocabulary. to omit them only truncates the players ability for expression. it's not a well thought out derogatory term used by confused gen z'ers

Add me to the list of people who hadn't heard of "boomer bends" before now :lol:

I hesitant to believe it's a real criticism because its a core technique of guitar playing that new players will want to incorporate into their style at some point as well. It doesn't mean it's the right fit for every song, but I find it difficult to believe anyone who plays guitar will look at bends as being exhausted of their creative potential.

An important part of the evolution of rock and metal since the 80s has been the incorporation of harmonic and rhythmic complexity from other styles of music. Petrucci is an obvious example of someone who pushed his music to have greater underlying variation for him to exploit as a soloist.

I assume everyone has seen Paul Gilbert's take on bending. The title is clickbaity...his point is basically that rock and metal had to evolve in the direction of blues and jazz to remain fresh. But suffice it to say that bending and vibrato are as essential to guitar playing in 2022 as they ever were.

 
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