quote:do you listen to any other relatively heavy music?
Does Evanescence count? That's about the heaviest thing on my iPod.
So, the answer is probably not. I should know better than to try to reason out my opinions when it boils down to, "I just don't like the musical style they play in..."
As a guess, I'd say it means that you're willing to make exceptions to a general avoidance of hard rock/metal in cases where the singer has a good and prominent voice. I like Evanescence, and I've got Fallen. I find they suffer from the "sameness" problem both rhythmically and melodically, but Amy Lee's voice is compelling enough to keep me interested.
It sounds to me like you aren't finding any of the musical elements you look for in Tool. It makes sense, at least to me, that you wouldn't like them.
My taste is different: I love the snarling guitars, thunderous drums, and the vocalist who can (and does) whisper, growl, scream, and sing. For all I've said about Adam Jones' propensity for D pentatonic, he knows how to coax some really full, gritty distortion out of his guitar without it sounding overproduced (which is how bands like Linking Park and Evanescence sound to me, although I listen to both from time to time).
quote:BTW, I'm listening to Sigur Ros' concert in Iceland right now.
I saw them live in Toronto last fall. It was incredible.
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I generally have found Tool to be a favorite among people who are musical, who play instruments or sing, and are passionate about thier music. That's why I'm a little surprised at Lyrhawn's and Scott R's lukewarm reception of them.
I love the intensity of Maynard's voice! I think he's an amazing singer, though definitely, yeah, not in a classical or choral way. He has fantastic control over his voice, which I find very expressive, and there are places in many songs where he does things with his voice that just blow me away. I think everyone says of music they don't like that it's repetitive. That seems to be a recurring pattern. To me, Tool is anything but repetitive.
I understand and agree with what twinky says about Tool being rhythmically more complex than they are melodically, in general. Still, songs like Reflection, in which they don't even use a 12 tone scale, are pretty melodically complex too. If you listen to that one, he is actually hitting notes that aren't notes in our scale. They are quarter tones above and below, I guess. I'm not sure since my brain doesn't recognize those phonemes of melody. It's apparently patterned after Indian music, and echoes in some ways the instrumental lines. ... So, because of things like that, I find them melodically very interesting as well.
Oh, and they use Fibbonacci series in a few places in Lateralus, to revert to rhythm for a moment. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13... What other band do you know who would use that rhythm in a song? And it totally works, too!
I'm another person who rarely pays much attention to words. At most they can enhance or detract from the music perhaps 10% either way. I usually don't bother to find out the words to a song until I already have listened to the music a good while, and then only if I really like the song. I like Tool's words, in general, because they're rich and suggestive without pinning you down to a certain interpretation. They are intense usually, just like the music, but always engaging. BunnV and I like to listen together to selected songs, after we know them well, and when we do that, we almost always have wildly differing interpretations of Tool songs, but both of us are sure our own interpretations are what the song really means. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:I generally have found Tool to be a favorite among people who are musical, who play instruments or sing, and are passionate about thier music. That's why I'm a little surprised at Lyrhawn's and Scott R's lukewarm reception of them.
I can't speak for Lyrhawn, but I'm a rebel.
I also don't care for Rush.
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From interviews that I've heard of Tool's lead singer, one of the the elements he tries to adhear to during his singing w/the band is making sure that his dynamics rarely surpass those of the instruments. His voice is an instrument just as important as any other in the band (and not necessarily more imporant). The purpose of his voice and lyrics, i believe, is to help convey his outlook on the world in a way that many can understand and interpret them according to their own personal beliefs and knowledge (Tool tends to be abstract in many ways).
I've been singing in a choir for a while and of course we do a lot of music in foreign languages as well as in latin from sacred texts. In general, latin isn't a popularly known language, and a point that our director made often was that we had to convey the "feeling" and "message" of the text in the dynamic and tone of our signing. This taught me the importance of how words are sung over what the actual words are.
Tool's lead singer doesn't publish lyrics until a few months after the release of a new album. Him, like many other musical artists, want the listener to soak in the music (the notes, the melodies, instruments, and vocals) before knowing the words, because knowing the words can be a distraction from that process. Especially when many have argued that Tool is "rhythmically complex," I think it's an essential step to settle in with the musical message before going ahead and trying to figure out the lyrical message.
After being involved with music, and having taken a music listening class, I find that I can use my knowlege of interpreting baroque, classical, and romantic era music much in the same way that I can listen to and enjoy bands like Tool. The only challenge is that it *may* be time consuming, and there are many people who rather enjoy music that does not require such an investment. Which is perfectly understandable, because people have different priorities and preferences when it comes to how they want to enjoy art. (Also, I'm not claiming to be any sort of art or music expert, I'm *far* from that).
As for me, and other people like Tatiana, we enjoy music that is artistically challening, because it's fun to figure it out and, in the end its very gratifying.
If you are looking for shining moments in vocals, or distinct lyrics, perhaps listening these Tool songs might be helpful:
-The Patient (vocals are very clear in this one, and the music isn't "heavy" for the most part)
-Schism
-Sober
-Disposition
-Aenema
-Parabol
-Opiate
Those are the ones that I think the words are relatively clear on first listen.
posted
My Dear Flaming Amphibious Friend, Yes it finally arrived today!!!!!
<dances>
It's ripping een as I type. The packaging is amazing. I sat here and just gazed at the stereoscopic pictures for a long while.
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I'm listening to it on my new Creative Nano Plus, and it sounds fantastic! The nice earbuds the guy suggested are very comfortable, too, and they sound really good. I'm excited about finally having portable music of good quality. It makes me want to go for a walk or run.
I am on the second time through on the CD, now, and I am liking everything I hear. Special favorites won't emerge for a few days probably. I'll post those as they come up.
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My favorite song by far on the album is 10,000 days (wings pt. 2). The lyrics are some of the most powerful that Maynard has written IMHO. They're absolutely incredible and overwhelming at times. Beautiful song...took me awhile to get into this album as I think it's very different for them (I was expecting another Lateralus), but I'm definitely loving it.
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My favourite thing to do is listen to 6, 7 and 8 in quicck succession. They flow together so well.
Posts: 1594 | Registered: Apr 2006
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Scott, I'd recommend Tool's Parabol/Parabola off of the album Lateralus if you want to give them another chance.
This--from a voice minor and choir-geek tenor. Maynard (of tool) DOES have a nice voice in addition to his "rock" voice. I didn't swallow Tool immediately, either--but the complexity of their rhythms and genius songwriting has made me a fan.
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I've listened to it a few more times, and I'm crazy about "right in two", and "10,000 days (part 2)" and "vicarious". What about you?
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Wait... you're compressing the audio before listening to it?
That makes sense ... how? Why not just pop it into your home stereo/boombox/PC's CD-ROM drive and listen to it without all the nasty compression?
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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Can you hear the decrease in quality? I can't. Perhaps I went to one too many really loud concerts in my life or something. I don't know.
I seem to hear more when I listen to it on my mp3 player than on the stereo in my car. That's probably because of the earbuds, though. I'm not listening to stereo in the house now, either on computer or on my main stereo system, because I don't want to add any stressors to Drive By. She prefers the quiet.
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Our friendly flammable frog is correct. It's all the way in there away from my room where I prefer to hang out. And I can't hear any difference in quality. I think I turned up my guitar amp to 10 one too many times or something. Seriously. Is it a big difference to you?
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posted
Here's the best analogy I can come up with.
It's the difference between a piece of tightly woven fabric that you can see most of the colors and texture and a series of thin pieces of semi-transparent material layed on top of one another.
In one, I can see all of the material, but it's all sort of mashed together. It's still servicable, but I can't appreciate it's finer detail.
In ther other, I can take each piece and hold it up to the light and see its every detail. I can see its beauty and I can see its flaw.
These are extremes. There's a lot of music out there where it doesn't really matter what it sounds like, but there is also music where each and every resonance and each and every part of the music is a joy to listen to and that's what I feel I miss sometimes with compressed audio.
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![[Smile]](smile.gif)
That's about the heaviest thing on my iPod. 
