Chords for WHY You Can't Play POLYPHIA

[D] Wikipedia describes imposter [A] syndrome, also known as [Bm] imposter phenomenon [G] or imposterism,
as a psychological occurrence in which an individual doubts [A] their skills,
[G] talents, accomplishments, and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. _ _
He's a phony!
And Healthline.com adds that this can persist despite your education, experience, [A] and
[G] accomplishments.
So why am I saying all this?
[B] Because nothing [A] has made me connect with this
more lately than when one of my guitar [G] students came for a lesson and asked to learn some polyphy.
I've played guitar now for 20 years and I've been teaching for the last 6.
I'm quite comfortable with my ability to identify strengths and weaknesses in my playing
and I'm confident that if I wanted to do [D] something on the guitar I could put my mind to it and
achieve it.
So how hard could it be?
We chose the song Neurotica [G] and we started learning it.
And at the end of a [D] 45 minute guitar lesson we'd learned the first 15 to 20 [G] seconds
in 45 minutes.
And that wasn't even getting it up to [A] speed, that was just learning the [Bm] notes
that we needed to play.
And after that lesson I remember coming home and I definitely had some
questions on my mind.
I'm supposed to be [G] the guitar teacher and I can't play the song that
I'm teaching.
So do I really deserve to be doing this?
And is my student going to wonder why he's
having guitar lessons from me when I can't play the thing that he wants to learn?
The whole thing
was a pretty humbling experience but I was determined not to let it beat me.
So when I got
home I grabbed my guitar and I practiced it and after what felt like an eternity this was as good
as I could get it.
_ _ [D] _ _ _
_ _ [E] _ [G] _ _ _ _ [D] _
[F#m] _ [Bm] _ _ _ [Em] _ [F#] _ [G] Some might say that that's not that bad but I was less than impressed.
So why after
playing guitar for 20 years am I having such a hard time with this?
I might be out of line with
this one, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming that I'm speaking for quite a large
majority of guitar players, seasoned guitar players, who might have attempted some of these
songs and felt a similar way.
[D] Well I noticed something really interesting in the initial
guitar lesson I had with my student when we first went through the song because at the end of the
session we both had it down at a similar level in terms of the notes that we were playing and also
the speed.
He's been playing the guitar for four years so it almost seemed like my additional 16
years of experience on the instrument made little to no difference in my ability to learn the song
versus his.
And [N] if I'm being completely honest, if anything dare I say it, it almost seemed like he
had an easier time learning it than I did.
And after thinking about it for a little while I think
I've figured out why that might be.
In the same way that only within the last 100 years or so we've
practically gone from horse and carriage to cars to planes to literally landing on the moon, guitar
has also evolved quite a bit.
From Robert Johnson recording the Crossroad Blues on an acoustic guitar
with a slide, [G] to Buddy Holly, one of the first artists to use [A] a Fender Stratocaster in the [G] 1950s,
[Gm] to Eddie Van Halen, to Steve Vai, to John Petrucci and now to the Tim Henson [A#] and Scott
[G] Pages of the world.
There's been quite a monumental shift in what you can do with the instrument.
I reckon I've learned to play the guitar in what I consider to be a very traditional way.
I started with chords and then I learned a few songs and then maybe went to power chords, maybe
to scales, learning how to do a little bit of lead guitar playing, a little bit of improvising and so
on.
And when I'm learning most songs these days I can usually visualize how they were crafted from
the key to the [Am] scales to the chord progressions [G] etc.
But learning to play Polyphia felt completely
[D] alien.
Obviously the songs have keys and they use scales and things [Bm] like that but they're being used
in such a new and modern [A] way that my traditional view of the fretboard and the guitar that I've
been crafting for the last 20 [Bm] years is almost a hindrance.
And as well as trying to visualize it,
I'm also fighting with 20 years of muscle memory trying to learn something new.
[N] So this leads me
back to what I was saying earlier about my student almost seeming to have an easier time learning it
than I did.
The main difference between us is that he doesn't have 20 years of muscle memory and he
hasn't developed knowledge of the fretboard in the same way that I have.
So when he's playing it he's
not trying to make sense of it, he's just playing the notes he's been told to play and you know what?
Getting some pretty good results.
And when I think about it there's no shortage these days of videos
popping up on Instagram or YouTube of really young [A] kids playing this sort of stuff.
In the [D] same way
that when I started I went straight to learning Metallica riffs and ACDC, kids [G] these days might be
picking up a guitar and going straight to Polyphia.
And if a kid is brought [A] up in let's say France with
French parents [G] and French friends and everything like that, [D] it's a pretty safe bet that kid's going
to get really good at speaking French as opposed to me [G] trying to learn a new language at the age of 33.
And that's what Polyphia is to me, it's a new language.
Or imagine an 80 year old man having a
conversation with a young child, both of them speak in English but the child is using a lot of
new modern slang words which weren't even invented when this old man was growing up.
That would be a
pretty confusing conversation.
It's also worth mentioning that to me this isn't a style of
guitar playing that you can just bust out whenever the mood strikes.
It's a complete dedication to
nail all the nuance and the precision required.
And in the same way that if a person went to the gym
and builds a lot of muscle, it requires a lot of dedication and consistency to be able to maintain
that once you've got it.
[D] If you don't use it you lose it.
And speaking for myself that's something
that I'm [G] personally not in a position to do.
I don't think [D] part-time Polyphia exists.
[N] So this is
something that's just been on my mind for a little while and I'm definitely not saying that you can't
Of course you can.
But you might find it a lot more challenging than anything that you've
previously attempted and this video is just my thoughts on why that might be.
But if you're
dedicated and you have the time and the patience then it's definitely achievable.
I'd love to get
everybody's thoughts on this so make sure you drop a comment below.
So personally I feel like Tim
Henson and the guys in Polyphia are absolutely amazing and they've done a lot for the instrument
in a very short space of time.
And I love seeing the faces of some of my [G] younger students especially
when they see this for the first time and they're just so impressed by what they're seeing.
And it
does inspire them to want to be able to play like that.
I guess in the same way that I wanted to
play Thunderstruck when I saw Angus Young play it when I first started.
So that's obviously [N] what I
did.
And if there is a new generation of kids and or guitar players in general learning this stuff
now then I can't even begin to imagine the [Em] innovation that this is going to lead to in the
future.
[G] I guess we'll find out.
Don't forget to like and subscribe and I'll catch you [D] next time.
Thanks for watching.
[A] _ [Bm] _ _ _ [G] _ [D] _ _ _ [A] _