I don't think people fully realize how deep the thought process of making music goes for Tool. They're big math, philosophy, and language buffs, and it shows in quite a bit of how the music is layered, and what the lyrics are based on. For example, let's look at one of their more extreme examples; the title track from their last album, Lateralus. I'm not sure how the hell the first person realized this (Tool never discusses the music much themselves), but I listened to it again after someone on the Toolshed.net forum mentioned it, and it was completely accurate.
The Fibonacci Sequence is a mathematical series in which every number is the sum of the two proceeding numbers, like so:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233.....
Well, someone noticed something with the way Maynard was singing the lyrics (the pauses in between each syllable, which was very deliberate. The -'s represent pauses within the syllable of each word):
(1) Black
(1) Then
(2) White are
(3) All I see
(5) In my in-fan-cy
(8) Red and yel-low then came to be
(5) Rea-ching out to me
(3) Let's me see
(13) As be-low, so a-bove and be-yond I i-magine
(8) Drawn out-side the lines of rea-son
(5) Push the en-ve-lope
(3) Watch it bend
The visual for th Fibonacci Sequence creates a spiraling effect spinning out infinitely from the center. Patterns of this can be found throughout the album art, and the song Lateralus itself revolves around seeing beyond the black and white to extend to places no ones been to.
"Swing on the spiral of,
our own divinity and,
still be a human"
"Spiral out. Keep going, spiral out...."
And this is all within one song. I could go on like this about almost every one of their songs. There's so much to learn and discover about how each song came to be, and how much has gone into them, that it's almost frieghtening. They just don't make artists like this anymore. Well....or ever. They've taken the best of all their predecesors, and combined them with a touch of their own style. The precision of Rush, the sound experimenting and slow song developements/build ups of Pink Floyd, the catchy riffs with varying time signatures of Jethro....they are the all encompassing band.
The Fibonacci Sequence is a mathematical series in which every number is the sum of the two proceeding numbers, like so:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233.....
Well, someone noticed something with the way Maynard was singing the lyrics (the pauses in between each syllable, which was very deliberate. The -'s represent pauses within the syllable of each word):
(1) Black
(1) Then
(2) White are
(3) All I see
(5) In my in-fan-cy
(8) Red and yel-low then came to be
(5) Rea-ching out to me
(3) Let's me see
(13) As be-low, so a-bove and be-yond I i-magine
(8) Drawn out-side the lines of rea-son
(5) Push the en-ve-lope
(3) Watch it bend
The visual for th Fibonacci Sequence creates a spiraling effect spinning out infinitely from the center. Patterns of this can be found throughout the album art, and the song Lateralus itself revolves around seeing beyond the black and white to extend to places no ones been to.
"Swing on the spiral of,
our own divinity and,
still be a human"
"Spiral out. Keep going, spiral out...."
And this is all within one song. I could go on like this about almost every one of their songs. There's so much to learn and discover about how each song came to be, and how much has gone into them, that it's almost frieghtening. They just don't make artists like this anymore. Well....or ever. They've taken the best of all their predecesors, and combined them with a touch of their own style. The precision of Rush, the sound experimenting and slow song developements/build ups of Pink Floyd, the catchy riffs with varying time signatures of Jethro....they are the all encompassing band.
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