Tool might eventually release a new album someday

pharmakos

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Keys are constructed to avoid tritones. You've got to go modal for those.

So yeah it they're using thematic tritones they're intentionally slipping out of key. And it's super common in metal. The tritone is a strong, unstable interval that lacks a strong resolution.

They can either sound hackey if used poorly or ominous and disturbing. It's hard to make them pleasant, but it is contextually possible.

nah not thematic tritones really, in this instance we're just talking about them going to the bV5 power chord in a riff, not an effect that usually sounds ominous / disturbing in a rock and roll riff context. idk if we can really say that's what they're doing here tho, because between that and the G# bass note rather than the G we'd expect over an E power chord out of B Aeolian, we now have two notes we'd have to annotate as being out of key. probably easier to just call it by whatever exotic name it would have, i'm not sure what it would be tho, because then we're getting into modes with 1.5 step intervals, and i don't know those by name at all. :)
 
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iannis

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I don't remember either. Dirk might know. I know there are some names for it in multi tonal music but that's not what they're doing. The kind where you have to run multiple diagrams and find the common link to explain why that particular note fits. Even though you can tell just by listening to it that it does. That's some hyper jazz nerd type shit.

I think it'd call it a persistent accidental and just leave it at that. If they're not using it to modulate into some bizzare tangentially related key (jazzy!) and just using it to distend the established chord structures (metal!)... harmonically that's what accidentals are for.
 
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pharmakos

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yeah, Tool might sit down with diagrams and charts to write their songs nowadays (no hyperbole), i doubt they were doing it in the Opiate era, especially since their later methods of mathing out were pretty different than what they did with Opiate. i agree that it was probably "accidental" in both senses of the word. :)
 

Alex

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yeah, Tool might sit down with diagrams and charts to write their songs nowadays (no hyperbole)

I think that's exactly how they write music nowadays. I remember reading an interview with Adam Jones and Kirk Hammett and Adam was talking about how he charted out all the Metallica songs and noted all the crazy time signature changes and Kirk was all "yeah we didn't do any of that - just thought it sounded cool". And Adam sounded so disappointed haha.
 
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pharmakos

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I think that's exactly how they write music nowadays. I remember reading an interview with Adam Jones and Kirk Hammett and Adam was talking about how he charted out all the Metallica songs and noted all the crazy time signature changes and Kirk was all "yeah we didn't do any of that - just thought it sounded cool". And Adam sounded so disappointed haha.

yeah just about everyone that ever has gone into the recording studio with them ends up commenting on it later, it seems.

i remember seeing an interview with Chino Moreno where he was blown away seeing how they charted out their music. if memory serves, he first saw it on the same day that he was bringing Maynard what he had written for "Passenger" (the duet he did with Maynard on the Deftones album White Pony), and he ended up feeling pretty self-conscious about how bare bones his write up for the song was compared to the charts and graphs Tool had going for their songs, haha. would have been the Lateralus recording sessions that he got a peek of.
 
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Del

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Fear Inoculum track list

1: "Fear Inoculum"


2: "Pneuma"


3: "Litanie contre la Peur"


4: "Invincible"


5: "Legion Inoculant"


6: "Descending"


7: "Culling Voices"


8: "Chocolate Chip Trip"


9: "7empest"


10: "Mockingbeat"

I hope CCTrip has evolved for the album version. Played live it's just a Danny solo session with weird synths.
 

pharmakos

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I thought "Descending" and "Invincible" were fan made names given to the songs temporarily before we learned the real names? I'm suspicious of that list.
 

Del

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They were never fan made titles. Descending was a tentative title that they ended up deciding to stick with.

It's right here if you don't believe it.


The list I pasted is the full one with the digital tracks.
 

pharmakos

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They were never fan made titles. Descending was a tentative title that they ended up deciding to stick with.

It's right here if you don't believe it.


The list I pasted is the full one with the digital tracks.

Yeah coming straight from the band is even less reason to believe it lol. Track seven is called "7empest"? The segue into it is "Chocolate Chip Trip"? They've gotta be shitting me. That's exactly like some April Fool's Day "new album track list" they would have posted back in the day. If they're not shitting us then my Lord, they've become a parody of themselves.
 
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pharmakos

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Supposedly those extra digital tracks ("available via the digital release; physical copy includes a digital download card") fit in to the album like this:

Digital:

1) Fear Inoculum
2) Pneuma
3) Litanie contre la Peur
4) Invincible
5) Legion Inoculant
6) Descending
7) Culling Voices
8) Chocolate Chip Trip
9) 7empest
10) Mockingbeat

I find it hard to believe Tool would be willing to release a compromised vision of the album that is less complete when played physically. So fans that get the physical version with the 4 inch rechargable HD screen are supposed to manually insert the segue tracks themselves in some sort of interactive listening experience reminiscent of some 90s Flaming Lips self indulgent shit? Yeah I'm not believing the whole announcement for now.

I suppose a more innocent but confusing explanation of that part would be if for some reason that the tracks on the physical version have the segues included in the same track as the song they're next to. But that doesn't quite add up either, why release them separately at all then if they're just segues?

Again, I might be wrong and it's neither of those but rather the most obvious answer, but if I am then Tool have become a parody of themselves.
 

Del

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Because it's 85 minutes with the segues and ambient interludes and wouldn't fit on a CD or vinyl. They aren't exactly essential. Who listens to Useful Idiot, Cesaro Summability, Mantra, or Die Eier Von Satan, etc.? They always get skipped.
 
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Adebisi

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Because it's 85 minutes with the segues and ambient interludes and wouldn't fit on a CD or vinyl. They aren't exactly essential. Who listens to Useful Idiot, Cesaro Summability, Mantra, or Die Eier Von Satan, etc.? They always get skipped.
Fuck you

I always listen to Die Eier Von Satan
 
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pharmakos

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The only ones I skip are Message to Harry Manback and (-) Ions. I don't skip anything on any of the others except for the final tracks.
 

Del

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Fuck you

I always listen to Die Eier Von Satan
giphy.gif
 
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Noodleface

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The thing I find with music theory is the more I learn, the more trapped I feel. I wish I had never learned theory.
 
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Volto!

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All this time I’ve spent never finishing learning music theory I just thought I was being lazy. Now I realize I was just protecting my creativity!
 
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