Two Titans Unite!! Polyphia with Vai - Ego Death Reaction!!

[@jakelawson1]

"Best rhythm section in the world." My man, you are not wrong. Every one of them would be the center of almost any other band. On another note, when this song gets stuck in my head, it's Steve's parts I think of. He's the melodic center of it all, just an absolutely perfect performance.

[@SCHTRAM]

To me my favourite part of the song is actually the trumpet at the end, its soooo flowy.

[@PatDVS49]

That note Steve hits before the drop is a little processed but can be achieved by hitting the low E string with the edge of your pick while muted.

[@kubark1016]

You are dead right. He dropped the pick twice on the muted E. Similar to a Violin rake.

[@pappihappi]

No hes pushing the string on the pickup vith the whammy or his pick

[@kubark1016]

@@pappihappi That's what I said. Raking the pick down on the E. When it mutes on the pickup you get a high squeak.

[@JoseMora-ml9fc]

Sounds like armonic and push the chord

[@ScruffyNerfhurder]

There's an interview with Steve Vai and Polyphia where they address the hate Polyphia got for editing Vai's guitar but he thought it came out great so any hate is unnecessary and probly just jealousy.

[@ManiacTobi]

What a great reaction and analysis, so in-depth, articulated and knowledgeable - great stuff! I‘ve watched dozens reactions to this masterpiece, and yours easily takes the cake.

[@PrymalChaos]

Thank you! What an amazing compliment!

[@Akkolon]

The gift that keep giving! - a lot of people have all sorts of opinions and criticisms of Polyphia but I like to just lean back, have a drink and enjoy the music and the skill.

[@hitmixhyepock9405]

Let's not forget Steve Vai once taught himself how to play his song backwards so it could be filmed and then played back reversed......so all his movements were weird backwards stuff while his fingers hit the notes the song did......crazy

[@PrymalChaos]

Yeah. That sounds like something he would do. 🤣🤣

[@ZachComa]

I believe the click, click, click, click after the heavily processed arpeggio sweep is him tapping the pickups.

[@JoseMora-ml9fc]

For me sounds like armonic

[@poonzor7087]

my man's gonna flip when he sees the MV Behind the Scenes

[@hardy377]

Relaxed is fast in sports, music and life!

[@audioentertainment]

My first impression when I watched the video for the first time was how on point the audio engineer was. The sound is so well mixed, and eq'd it is an amazing sound.

[@TheUselessJ]

I love that you mentioned the economy of movement! One of the most beautyful things about Tim's playing is how little movement there is with both of his hands. It's truly mesmerizing!

[@catalystguitarguy]

I think what you were looking for on Vai’s solo after the sweep was a Pick tapping the string. On high gain you can use your pick as a “slide” and do a light hammer on with the off the fretboard over the pickups to “tap” a note but you have to do it dead accurately otherwise it’ll be way out of key, tune, or musicality. Knowing exactly where that note is and also making it sound in tune. Was beautiful.

[@mikeni1225]

You hit it on the nail. Polyphia songs which are technical overlayed with an emotional voice really put everything together.

[@lred1383]

a bunch of people already said this, but the thing he does around the drop is pick tapping an artificial harmonic while holding down a whammy pedal. The pedal isn't present in the video, but is very obviously used in the recording

[@Beaufortlawrence]

Give the playthroughs for chimera off this album a watch. Absolutely masterful, all around!

[@raoulduke8720]

"still room for a stank face" hahaha

[@chric2vic]

That main drop with Stevie, He does a sweep and my guess is he uses a Copper pick to tap the high E.

[@markcooper8561]

Vai is the inventor and master of the 'drop bend' using the whammy. Love it or hate it, you can't deny the mastery of the technique.

[@ABlandLife]

As you busted out your guitar during Scott on the center piece I did the same. I wanted to qualify it as “dry processed light reverb”. Idk how he’s doing it but yeah these boys are pros

[@PrymalChaos]

They’re nuts.

[@nates2]

I mean nothing bad by this comment, but the ad for color blind lenses, does the before after picture really make sense here :)

[@PrymalChaos]

If you don't see a difference you may have a problem. Technically they should look the same to a colourblind person (like me) but normal sighted people should see a difference. It's actually a great way for people like me to demonstrate how colourblindness works to normal sighted people. There's a great phone app called CVS that I whip out all the time, that shows normies what I see through the camera lens. People find it really fascinating.

[@swere1240]

i love the thumping they do in this its not alot of it but the dead notes they do really add to it i think. and ive been learning hybrid picking the past few months and its super difficult to do for me who from an early age only used the pick. i wish when i first started i would have learned to do it i would probly be a much better guitar player. and you should check out some of the nural dsp archetype plugins they are really good. i use the gojira one it has a whammy pedal built into it and its awesome. and the way steve vai is getting those sounds is hes using a sustainiac pickup on that guitar im pretty sure which sustains a higher pitched note when u have a certain setting on not sure how it works exsactly but thats how he gets that sound i think.

[@PrymalChaos]

Nice! Thanks for the info!

[@Okgosana]

the bends that Vai doing that you pointed out is like John Mayer does something similar

[@nondescriptcat5620]

i'd love to see what they'd come up with for a collaboration with Adrian Belew or Robert Fripp.

[@jigstraw2809]

I'm not sure but i think the steve vai bit is just an arpeggio down and back up, but the whammy divebombs on the way down, then gets sharpened on the way back up. Then i'm pretty sure the noise he gets after that is achieved by tapping the unwound B and E strings with the edge of the pick in a sort of percussive way, but the pick kind of acts like a glass slide, essentially "fretting" a note like somewhere between the pickups i imagine. somewhere beyond the neck.

[@miff227]

to me it just sounds like a frequency sweep on a resonance filter cutoff, but arpegiated. Maybe the whammy is sending MIDI data. I don't think he's fretting any of it? I'm not a guitarist though.

[@joshuabeall3092]

Thank Chet Atkins along with Vai hybrid picking and technical skills

[@EzScrumptious]

Tapping with pick in strings near pick ups, doing that since I was 7yrs old 🤣

[@Snapjockey]

Polyphia with Jeff Beck....mmmm!

[@girmanthapa1645]

Steve Vai is using pitch wah and delay with pitch shift aswell inorder to play those notes🤌

[@RobKeay1]

At the end of Steve’s solo I think that her hits the pickup with his pick a few times.

[@vhaarr]

They did play the intro live for the camera.

[@PrymalChaos]

That actually make a sense. It seemed like a lot of post-production work to go through.

[@CHR1TT3R]

It sounds like he is using the pick to force the string down onto the pickup.

[@JoseMora-ml9fc]

Its a harmonic and pushing and waving

[@roygarrett1663]

The part with click click sounded like pick on a soundpot.

[@bankshotfishing4860]

He has a sustainer pick up in that guitar.

[@Xetius]

I thought that Steve Vai was shorting the strings on his pickup to get those high notes at the end of the sweep.

[@techwizpc4484]

I wonder if Joe Satriani could jam with these guys?

[@PrymalChaos]

I hope so! That would be rad!

[@ManishChalise]

Its called "Joint Shifting" technique

[@PrymalChaos]

Oh sick! It has a name!

[@k.rhansen2038]

sound like they are mixing in anime rock

[@leddygee1896]

It sounds like it’s quantified in Pro Tools. If it’s not, that is some serious groove! I hope it’s not in a grid… Amazing.

[@PrymalChaos]

Most production these days is a little tweaked, however these guys crush it live, so it probably isn't a huge deal.

[@shay3514]

YOU NEED TO REACT TO THE ALBUM PREMYA

[@santiago1658]

About the guitar effect... See in 2:52... kzbin.info/www/bejne/maeml2eMdpJ_qs0

[@PrymalChaos]

Ahhh. I see. How good was crossroads!

[@santiago1658]

@@PrymalChaos 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

[@TUBBYMAXX]

That "noise sound" is tapping the string onto the pickup, Cheers !

[@PrymalChaos]

Yeah that makes sense! Thank you!

[@TUBBYMAXX]

@@PrymalChaos No problem Sir, easy on an Ibanez ssh, just have to be sure pickup is on to get that "cheerp, Noise?" I do not play ssh guitars but I would imagine the middle would be the best to quickly hit that "effect" (depending on pickup height of course)

[@grischad20]

i'ml a budding guitar player, and i don't follow guitar content closely at all. fact is, i hadn't ever watched steve vai despite having heard of him. one thing to say after seeing this video for the first time. these arn't hands, these are shovels

[@Toastedasf]

hey can you please react to chimera by polyphia feat lil west

It's like a representation of a novice guitarist trying to play the lyrics with solos. These guys seem to have skipped the disciplines in between and jumped into the future with the same awareness :) Also, Tim Henson has potentially alienated 6 million guitarists from their guitars. As novices, we are very disappointed, all our enthusiasm is gone. We won't play guitar anymore. 😢

[@jessicafisher6979]

prebending it's not a novelty

[@PrymalChaos]

I think you're referring to Vai's technique that I mentioned (it's been a while since I posted this one). What was weird about it is not that he was pre-bending it was that he was playing the last note while pre-bending the next. Like he has 2 or 3 stings in various states of bending at the same time. Each finger is bending its own string. Although it's been ages since I saw the video. I remember it sounds really wild.

[@jessicafisher6979]

@@PrymalChaos it’s because he recorded his part multiple times for the video they struggled to tab it before he showed up to shoot it. originally it was him playing 3-4 times

[@leddygee1896]

John Petrucci could have easily accommodated Polyphia if Steve had turned it down. That would have been cool, actually…

[@PrymalChaos]

Yeah. I'd watch the heck outta that!

[@leonardholifield8808]

Put your guitar DOWN and just play the video.