Tim Henson of Polyphia: Redefining guitar

Monkey Man said:
I hear ya bro'. Visual Kei can be found in rock, pop and metal categories in Japan and practically all the VK musicians are super-talented.

You mentioned Galneryus. It's a power metal band with a strong neo-classical metal influence. Not visual kei. I love their stuff BTW.

One of my faves from 10 years ago. Absolutely-epic and I'll bet most here would really appreciate this:

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Never heard of these guys (to be fair, I never heard of Polyphia either lol) and I actually enjoyed that more than I thought I would, I think it might be because the guitar playing really reminded me of Marty Friedman (some tasty phrasing to go with the barrage of notes, something that's lacking a bit in the OP's style IMHO), pretty cool stuff, thanks for sharing!
 
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Glad you like it bro'!

Yup, great phrasing, decent chord progressions, song and melody construction (vocals), ripper lead breaks and tone and overall an epic-feeling song.
 
Interesting world these days; saying any single thing automatically comes with the assumption you have to be several other things because of that one thing you said.

“I don’t like Polyphia” = “You’re a boomer, you must love Jimi and EVH but can’t pull your head out of your own ass”
”They’re talented but not my thing” = “Fuckin’ fanboy, you must love having people tell you what to like”
”I had chocolate ice cream once” = “Oh so you must love putting things in your orifices”
”I don’t like Biden” - “Fucking racist, you must love seeing brown and black people die”
”I don’t like Trump”- “You and your ilk just want to force vaccines into people, TDS and blah blah”

I hope at some point the world can walk itself back from this. We had better communication when it was limited by technology,
 
Wizard of Ozz said:
Breaking new ground… hardly…

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Japanese visual kei bands… Versailles, Jupiter, GazettE and many others have been doing the fruity-shred thing for awhile and sell more tickets, more albums, and make more money. So nothing new. And some of those boys (yes… those are all boys in those videos) can not only out play Tim… but are way fancier dressers. Maybe he can get some guitar lessons and make-up tips from them?


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Wow, I’d have never guessed those were dudes. I remember people with long hair being labeled as feminine in the 70s just for having long stringy hair (like I had). So I can relate…yet I can’t at the same time. That’s orders of magnitude more feminine than even hair metal got.

I’d never heard of those bands and didn’t know it has been a thing for a while. It’s not my bag so I wasn’t paying attention.

But my posts itt have been more about the disgust of old farts hating on a young person pursuing excellence at guitar and wearing the fashion of their era/genre. I was there in the 70s and I remember being the young person hated on by old farts for trying to pursue excellence at guitar and wearing the fashion of my era/genre.

EG those bands you mentioned, I could have been hating on them for years now but I just decided to ignore it.
 
RaceU4her said:
I’ve been in bands where I was the only one without face, neck and head tattoos :dunno: I really didn’t think tattoos were still an odd thing
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Thankfully, they aren’t. I’m covered and wear a short sleeve shirt to work every day where I work in a professional environment and represent a company that leases out multimillion dollar suites. Never once had an issue with being looked down upon because of them since I left the restaurant business where it was only old folks giving me shit for them.
 
Techdeth said:
He’s battling lol
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Holy shit, over an hour to talk about why he doesn’t like Polyphia in a video he also claims guitar journalism is dead. There’s some irony wrapped up in this but if that’s how the dude likes spending his time, it’s only his to waste!

I fucking hate Sublime, I think my head would explode if I had to talk about them for more than 2 minutes.
 
RevDrucifer said:
Holy shit, over an hour to talk about why he doesn’t like Polyphia in a video he also claims guitar journalism is dead. There’s some irony wrapped up in this but if that’s how the dude likes spending his time, it’s only his to waste!

I fucking hate Sublime, I think my head would explode if I had to talk about them for more than 2 minutes.
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I feel the same . But I basically like anything with guitar . So hating stuff with guitar is weird period
 
A killer guitar player and damn sure a Fn weirdo! No mistake on that. Don't give a F what his preferences are. Not much energy in his stage performance, most guitar giants have had showmanship and energy! EVH revelutioned guitar playing, personally I do not get that from this dude 1 bit, however it's not my generation and I'm glad! No disrespect to anyone , no one acted like a throat junkie and got applauded for it when I grew up, Axl ran around in short spandex , if that ain't Fn queen looking, however at least he acted like a punk bitch instead of a throat queen! Huge difference IMO. This dude is talented beyond talent, however he is like watching paint dry. No thanks, but to those that like it, enjoy it's great to have other options besides old school styles
 
He's a good guitarist, so are rest of these new class of "modern" shredders.

My only complains are the following:

- They all have dogshit clean tones, and that's pretty much all they use. There's just something about that ultra clean and hi-fi sounding clean sound that doesn't work for me at all. There's zero warmth to it, might as well be a "clean guitar sound" synth patch.

- The playing style is too busy. It sounds like they're trying to cram everything they know into every sequence, and I guess that's the desired effect. But to me, it just sounds too gimmicky, and they start to suffer from the effect that everything sounds exactly the same, in a negative way. In the same way that Yngwie sounds like a caricature of himself these days, playing the same 5 licks over and over again. To keep the sound exciting, one needs to use the stuff a bit more sparingly...simply put, you saturate the songs with the same sounds.

- And maybe a last critique, but this goes to everyone these days - everything sounds so damn overproduced and punched in. I really miss the sound of human touch. Right now, we're heading toward a sound where you can tell whether it's a sequencer / midi file with really good production, or actual guitarist playing.
 
Also, FWIW, many of these Instagram/TikTok shredders can't really play their own stuff live. Or it sounds horribly butchered if they attempt to play the songs live. But that's just the nature of things where you write incredibly unrealistic stuff, and punch in the licks either note by note, or a couple of seconds at a time - it's nothing new, people have been doing it for a couple of decades now.

But then again, we're living in a time where playing live isn't really essential. You can be a bedroom guitarist, and make a living of it.
 
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Dreamspace said:
But then again, we're living in a time where playing live isn't really essential. You can be a bedroom guitarist, and make a living of it.
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I’m over bands :dunno: I’d way rather just record myself these days, have no one else to deal with and make all the money and bang all the chicks.
 
Here's a short example of how it's possible to do that fancy-schmancy stuff but still remain melodic in the traditional sense of the word.

This I could listen too. Tim's stuff? Not so much, if at all:

 
Monkey Man said:
Here's a short example of how it's possible to do that fancy-schmancy stuff but still remain melodic in the traditional sense of the word.

This I could listen too. Tim's stuff? Not so much, if at all:

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That was cool and yes a good example of similar style with much better flow and taste. It's funny that it sounds like a John Mayer rip off..."dude, you're playing Neon wrong!"
 
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