 Hey everyone, Polyphonic here. I just wanted to thank you so much for watching all my videos and as I promised, here's a Q&A. You gave your Q's, I'll give my A's. Just a quick disclaimer before, everything I do is scripted and this is very unscripted. So, um, yeah, you're probably in for a wild ride. Buckle up. And one more thing before we get into it, I'm gonna try to get to as many comments as I can, but I'm probably not gonna get them all. I'm sorry if I couldn't answer your question. If I don't get to your question, let me know if you guys want another Q&A sometime. I'd be happy to do it if you guys have questions that you want answered that I can't answer in this one. Alright, so let's dive in. First off, a couple people asked me to just talk about myself and my background. Do I have a formal education in music? What's my day job? All of these things. So first of all, I'll say that Polyphonic is my day job because you guys are awesome and your support of my stuff has allowed me to do this full-time, which is absolutely insane. But my background is in music journalism. I don't have any degrees in music theory or musicology or anything like that, but I am trained as a journalist and was working as a music journalist before I started Polyphonic. And I guess Polyphonic is still music journalism of a sort anyway, so that's kind of my profession, my trade, if you will. Other than that, I just grew up with a passion for music, especially kind of in high school, I got really into punk rock and that kind of led to me getting more and more into music of all kinds. Outside of music, I love hockey. And on that topic, Steven Ross asked, who's my hockey team? I'm a Die Hard Leafs fan, have been my whole life. Most of it has been awful. But, you know, things are looking up now. So let's make it happen. Kyle Dubis, Austin Matthews, whoot. Outside of hockey, I play Magic the Gathering. I'm quite fond of that. If you ever want to talk to me about magic, hit me up on Twitter. And I also just, I read a lot. I like books a lot. A couple of my recommendations would be Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman is my favorite author. Brian K. Vaughan's Saga is incredible. Literally anything by Jeff Lemire. And recently I've been reading a lot of Ursula Lagan, who is just absolutely incredible. So yeah, go read some of those. And as a lot of you probably know, I'm Canadian. I'm from Ottawa. I'm moving to Vancouver soon. And yeah, so that's me. I hope that that's enough information about me. Oh, and some of you guys asked if I can do a face reveal. No, I'm not going to do a face reveal, but I will show you this. This is roughly what I look like. It's an approximation by my good friend Richard over at the Plain Bagel. So check out his channel if you want to learn about money and finance. And also transfer this into a real person and you'll get kind of what I look like. Let's go into some of the questions about not me. However you pronounce this asks a question that I think is really important to address. Will I ever take suggestions for videos? I get asked to do videos all of the time. A lot of this Q&A was people asking for videos too. And my answer to every one of them is maybe. If I find an angle I like, I'll do it. If I want to make the video, I'll make it. I do do a lot of videos because people requested a video on an artist. I've definitely got some videos that I did specifically because they were requested by a lot of people. So yeah, sometimes I do things that people request or suggest. Most of the time I do what I think is interesting and what I think is cool. A couple people asked what are my top 5 Desert Island albums or top 5 albums of all time. And these lists are always hard so don't hold me to this. This is a little off the cuff and this changes of course. But right now I would probably say Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan. That album is in my mind the best Dylan album ever and possibly the best album ever. It has so much to offer. Go listen to it. Houses of the Holy by Led Zeppelin. Zeppelin are one of my favorite bands ever. And Houses of the Holy is my favorite Zeppelin album ever for lots of reasons. And then I'd probably say Tapimpa Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar. That album absolutely floored me. I'm of the belief that Kendrick is the greatest rapper of all time and Tapimpa Butterfly is his opus. I think I love all of his stuff. Good Kid Mad City is a close second for me but Tapimpa Butterfly is just such an album. It's just an album man. Skechers of Spain by Miles Davis. I love Miles Davis. Kind of blue is probably kind of objectively his best work but I love Skechers of Spain. I love Miles and it's so atmospheric and just so good. And then I need to round it out so I think I feel like this is a bit of a basic answer but Dark Side of the Moon. Like how can it not be Dark Side of the Moon? That album is it's everything and it's one of those albums where anytime I start to think oh maybe I'm over hyping it or something like that I give it another listen and I'm just floored. I'm left breathless. I think it deserves all of the praise that it gets and then some. Troy Owens asked how do I use music snippets in my video without infringing on copyrights? And I've had a lot of people ask this before too. The short of it is my videos are transformative. They provide new meaning to the work so they're protected under fair use. The long of it is that I deal with a lot of copyright stuff behind the scenes. It's frustrating and a lot of work to allow myself to do what I should legally be able to do and what's well within my rights for fair use. So yeah, there is some copyright stuff but the gist of it is fair use. A couple of people asked what my personal favorite video of mine is and right now I'd probably say my Miles Davis kind of blue video. It's definitely my favorite visually that I've ever done. I really loved the aesthetic I created. I thought I nailed it on that one and I was really proud of that. And content-wise I think it does a good job teaching about a really important shift in jazz and why kind of blue is such an important album. So you should go watch that video. Delalia asks, am I hot? Yes. Blue Nidalee and a bunch of people ask if I play any instruments, if I make music, things like that. Yeah, I casually play bass, guitar, harmonica and piano. Bass is my main instrument. I don't play nearly as much as I used to. But I fiddle around. I'm not in any bands right now. I've been in two bands before. Shout out to Intrepid and Turtle. I played bass in both of them and keys a little bit in Intrepid too. A number of people asked, what's my process when I make a video? A couple of people asked, what do I use? I use Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects to make my videos. The whole process takes anywhere between 30 to 40 hours per video, some even longer. Usually about six of that I'd say maybe is spent researching and writing scripts. And then the rest is spent editing. In the process I tend to find a topic, I'll be listening to a song or an artist and be like, oh hey, I wonder if this song has any story behind it and I'll dive in. Or a lot of the time I know these stories because I just, I like reading this stuff. And other times I'll just hear a song on the radio and remember something about it or things like this. And usually it's just music I like, music that I think is important, I think tells a good story. So from there I'll just kind of dive in. I'll spend a day just reading everything I can about that song, that band. And a lot of browsing deep corners of Google. A couple of artists I have books on that I'll dive into and kind of find an angle. And then I'll write out a script. And then I need to create an aesthetic for my video because I want the visual feel of my videos to reflect the content. Some of them it's easier, sometimes it's hard to come up with a visually pleasing aesthetic. And then from there I just, I put it together, I record the script after my wonderful girlfriend edits it. And then I edit my video. I usually spend a week editing my video, a work week. And yeah, I think that's the process. A number of people asked for popular artists that I don't like. I'm pretty broad with my music tastes, I try to like everything. With that being said I hate Brian Adams. And I struggle with U2 a lot. I like some of their early work and some of their songs are just incredible. But most of U2 I can pass on. Oh and the Foo Fighters. I don't like the Foo Fighters. I know that's gonna piss a lot of you off in the comments. But I just find them very plain. I find them very straightforward, radio rock. And they're very good at doing that. But they've just never, never enthralled me in the way that they seem to enthrall a lot of people. I don't fully understand that. But that's okay. Everyone has their things that they don't like. Treed979 asked, What was the album that left me feeling the most disappointed and unsatisfied? That would probably be I'm With You by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. At the time that album came out I was a huge Chili Peppers fan. And I had tempered my expectations because it was missing Frucciante. But I was still really excited for that album. And I was still really hoping for something amazing. And it really wasn't. It was an entirely forgettable album. Ryguy says, Asked what my first concert experience was. A Great Big C. They're a Canadian band. My parents took me to see them. It was a great show. They're wild. I would have been, I don't know, eight or nine. That's probably one of my first musical memories. I don't know actually how old I was. But that's one that sticks out in my mind for sure. Is going to my first concert and just being surrounded by live music with this band that I loved growing up. And that was really cool. Any guilty pleasures? I don't feel guilty about any of the music. I like good music. I mean, some people who are like rock elitists or anti-pop or stuff like that would consider some of my stuff guilty pleasures. Like I am an unabashed Taylor Swift fan. Red is just such a good album. But again, I don't think I should feel guilty about that. I don't even really like the concept of guilty pleasures. I think that all music has merit and people should appreciate all music even if you don't like it. There's nothing wrong with somebody liking music you don't like unless that music is Brian Adams. Then there's a lot wrong with that. But other than that, I don't think anyone should feel guilty about music they listen to. Uriah Siner said that intro song pulls me in every single time. That intro song is forebanned by Prax. He's awesome. He deserves more attention. Go check out his SoundCloud. He's on Spotify now. Check out his Spotify. He makes almost all of the music that I use. And his music is just really good. So show him some love. Sam Lolan Loughlin Sam asked what happened to the Jack White video. I think it's blocked in some places or on some platforms because of copyright stuff. I know in Canada I can still rewatch it. But I'm not sure exactly what's up. But that's that unfortunately. And James Wright asked why can't you pronounce women correctly? I can. You guys just can't. Why does the E turn the O into an I sound? That doesn't make sense. A couple of people have asked what are the origins of Polyphonic? Why did I start it? I saw a lot of other video essayists. People like the Nerdwriter, Captain Christian, every frame of painting. And I really loved the medium. But I saw that there wasn't anybody doing it in music. So I was like, hey, I learned video editing in journalism school. I like music and have a lot of music knowledge. So why not try it? And I tried it and it turns out I wasn't the only one looking for a music video essay channel. So yeah. A couple people asked me about kind of the state and health of rock. And really this is a question I've gotten in a lot of my comments over the past year. And it's something that I have a lot of thoughts on. And they generally boil down to rock's not dead. There's a lot of good stuff happening in rock. Like look for it. Pop has always happened and other genres have always happened. Just because other things are popular doesn't mean that rock isn't popular. And it doesn't mean that there's not great rock music happening. I don't like this narrative that oh rock is dying or like spare me. Rock's fine. Will it ever dominate the top 40? I don't know. Maybe not. Probably not. But that doesn't mean there's not mainstream success with rock bands. And it's more a symptom of there being more and more diverse music than ever. And people being able to listen to their niche in their own way rather than have one authority kind of dictate what everyone is listening to. Andrew R. asked if I collect physical copies of music and which bands and artists do I own the most? I collect vinyl. I'm not like a super vinyl nerd, but I enjoy collecting vinyl. One of the prides of my collection is I have every Led Zeppelin album on vinyl. I have a lot of Bob Dylan vinyl. And I've got a lot of Jack White, White Stripes, Dead Weather. A lot of the third man record stuff I have too. Those are kind of the highlights of my collection. The Germanic Language Branch asked have I ever felt like doing a video on music I don't like? No, not really. There's so much music that I like that it would take a lifetime to get to all of it. So I'm going to focus on that before I focus on music that I don't like. Like Brian Adams. Clothes. Cloth. Cloth. Cloth. Cloth. Cloth. This guy asked what other forms of art do I explore and analyze and how do they relate to music? The biggest one is literature. I read a lot. I like a lot of comics and a lot of books. I think they inform me as a listener because a lot of music is intertextual. A lot of music that I like references literature or even just kind of has story structures built into it. And I always enjoy that. And I think one of the things that I always like about music is just the sound of words and turns of phrases and lyrics. And that's everywhere in prose and also in poetry, which I like a fair bit too. And they also asked a question that I'm really interested in answering. What album, song, or musical piece changed my perspective on something in a meaningful way? Beyonce's self-titled album turned me on to pop. For a long time I was kind of a pop elitist and I was like, oh, I don't like Top 40. I don't like pop music. But holy crap, that album is so good and it just opened me up to what pop could be. And I love pop music now. I think it's great. And I think that people who refuse to listen to pop music are missing out on a whole lot. So yeah, listen to Beyonce. Beyonce is incredible. A couple of people have asked, do I get tired of listening to music? Do I get burned out by the sheer volume of music coming out? Not really. I always like listening to music, but I don't actually listen to music as much as you'd think I might. I listen to a lot of podcasts in my spare time. And in terms of keeping up with the music coming out, I just listen to the stuff that I want to listen to. I don't think that I need to be up to date with everything and it's okay to not know things. And then if something seems really important, I'll listen to it. But generally, I don't know. I listen to what I'm feeling. If I'm feeling something new, I'll listen to something new. If I'm feeling something old, I'll listen to something old. I listen to anything except Brian Adams. Timothy Stevens asked a really tough question that I don't really have an answer to, which is how do you feel about artists that are abusers or generally bad people? And that's a question that I've been confronting myself with a lot lately. Because generally, and I do hold to the belief that you can separate art from artists. Because a lot of my favorite artists have done some really bad stuff. I mean even looking back through a modern lens at the stuff that the 70s rock groups like Led Zeppelin did and stuff like that, there's some pretty ugly stuff there. But I think you just need to be able to divorce this from the art because I think that the art has also brought meaning to a lot of people. But again, it's a really tough question that I don't fully have an answer to. I think that it's something that we all need to examine is how do we deal with this stuff as a society? Because it seems like it keeps happening and it seems like there's a lot of people who are really good artists who are bad people or who hurt people. And I don't think there's an easy answer to that unfortunately. I think it's something that we just need to examine. Dead Artist Fan Club asked, have there been any videos I was unable to make or finish? There's one that I made that's probably 80% complete that I bailed on because I felt that it was a little too negative and it didn't fit with the ethos of Polyphonic. I might release it as an exclusive to my patrons or make it a blog post or something sometime but it didn't fit with Polyphonic's ethos and so I didn't finish it. Other than that, I have a ton of scripts that I haven't made but a lot of them are just because I haven't gotten to them yet. I probably have, I don't know, a dozen or 20 scripts unfinished on various artists and topics that I just haven't made a video on yet. That's a lot of questions so I hope I didn't bore you guys. If I did, you probably didn't make it this far so that's okay anyways. So I just want to say one more time, thanks for liking, thanks for watching, subscribing. If you want to support me, go check out my Patreon. If you want to talk to me, hit me up on Twitter. And let me know if you guys want more videos like this in the future. I don't mind doing these Q&A videos, obviously I'm not going to do them too often because the main goal of Polyphonic is to put out video essays but if you guys are interested, I'll do more Q&As. Thank you so much for watching once again. Oh, and one more question. What did Kyle do? Kyle knows what he did.