Any Tool fans? - The Holy Gift

I ran across this a long time ago and let it slip my memory until digging through my firefox.

Tool (the band, folks), as everyone knows, is comprised entirely of geniuses. Maynard is likely smarter than myself on an order of magnitudes. He/they like to play with sacred geometry, fibonacci sequences, and the like.

Anyway - the album Lateralus is apparently the container for a hidden musical puzzle masterpiece resulting in a new album with different impact. When the tracks are reorganized based on clues contained in their lyrics, the beginning and ending sequences of the reorganized songs fit together to flow into one another, leading to a new listening experience and the true album (up for debate).

Please review the following links - and do some more digging into this on your own - at your leisure:

The Holy Gift

Resurrecting Lateralus: Tool's Holy Gift

And, for your enjoyment, here is the live presentation of the Holy Gift from Tool some time back - well before I found out about it, but it was news to me. Let me know what you all think!

This is AMAZING! S&F for you my man. Best post all day.

For those interested heres a link telling about it. The Holy Gift

Still love 'The Pot'

Gotta love Tool

That's awesome man.

Here's another really cool Easter egg I found out about only last year that has to do with 10,000 days.

Tool's Epic Do-It-Yourself Song

Three separate tracks from the latest Tool album can be assembled into a different one -- it's like Voltron, only with progressive metal songs instead of progressive metal robots (seriously, those guys had a woman pilot before most airlines). But plenty of bands do multi-part songs, so there's nothing special about it, right? Well, the difference is that, in this case, you don't get the full song by doing something as mundane as playing one track after the other -- you get it by changing the order and playing them at the same time. By themselves, the songs seem completely different: "10,000 Days" (11:13) is a long prog-rock number, "Wings for Marie" (6:11) is a quiet song that builds up into a crescendo, and "Viginti Tres" (5:02) is just a bunch of weird noises. 6:11 plus 5:02 adds up to 11:13 -- that's because you're supposed to put "Viginti Tres" and "Wings for Marie" together (in that order) and play them at the same time as "10,000 Days." If that sounds too complicated for you, check out the demonstration above. You'll notice that the weird sounds from "Viginti Tres" seem to be in sync with the melody of "10,000 Days." The band has never acknowledged any of this, but if you listen to the full song it's pretty obvious that they did this intentionally ... which is both mind-blowingly awesome and a little bit insane.

I absolutely love this band though. Like you said, they're all geniuses and take music to another level.

HUGE TOOL FAN!!




The sequence can be charted out in the form of an ever expanding spiral -- also known as the Golden Spiral.
Tool released the album Lateralus which is heavily based on the Fibonacci sequence. The actual song "Lateralus" follows the sequence very closely.

The song begins with the lyrics (numbers denote syllable counts):

1 - "Black"
1 - "Then"
2 - "White are"
3 - "All I see"
5 - "In My Infancy"
8 - "Red and yellow then came to be"
5 - "Reaching out to me"
3 - "Let's me see"

As you can see, it follows the sequence and when it reaches 8, it proceeds to go backwards. The song does eventually break the sequence, but there is a reason behind it:

"Over Thinking, Over Analyzing,
separates my body from my mind,
withering my intuition,
missing opportunities and I must
feed my will to feel my moment
drawing way outside the lines."

Lateralus suggests that we continue to expand our minds; Not to live life in a constant fashion but rather, spiral out and try new things.

"Reaching out to embrace the random
Reaching out to embrace whatever may come"

S + F

Oh yea. loves Tool man!!! Thanks for that Holy Gift, I had not seen it...wow
There are just not too many bands around anymore that put such creativity in their projects. Creativity as in not only music and lyrics, but conceptual in all areas, including the art and vids. I have never seen anyone(group) utilize, or should I say exploit and spank, so many time signatures before, amazing!!!

One of my favs:


Here's a couple of threads also:
Maynard James Keenan - A dedication
Tool, My Favorite Band

Peace,
spec

TOOL is awesome! Opiate is my favorite song by them but not really the part after the song it gets old after a while lol. I know how brilliant they each are as musicians but I had no idea about this, to cool OP thanks

Tool is my favorite band. They are so far beyond what any other Rock group is doing today. Excellent post.

You the man,
Thanks for this and your absolutely right, pure geniuses all of them!

S & F

Haven't heard this one, I'm off to try it out! I've read that it's best to use the physical CD (no mp3 rips, you cheap-o's!) for maximum effect, but others are saying to bleed the intro/outro of each song together in an editor for the best results. I'll try both to see what's up.

Just in case you're wondering, the track order is: 6, 7, 5, 8, 4, 9, 13, 1, 12, 2, 11, 3, 10

Here's how someone with too much time on their hands came to that conclusion:

Write down the numbers 1-13 linearly.
This is the track order as it is now.

Now make a parabola-shaped line connecting 6 to 7. Do it over top of the numbers.

Then connect 7 to 5 underneath the numbers, and 5 to 8, 8 to 4, and 4 to 9. Now you have the first spiral.

Faaip de Oiad serves as a connector or separator, depending on how you look at it.

So now we have 6,7,5,8,4,9, and 13.

Now, do the same thing for the second spiral.

1 to 12 (over top), 12 to 2, 2 to 11, 11 to 3, and 3 to 10.
Now you should have what looks like a small spiral infused with a big spiral.

Now we have 6,7,5,8,4,9,13,1,12,2,11,3,10

This is the alternate track list. It is created by spirals.

If you're into these kinds of mindblasters that bands pull, check out some of the stuff Radiohead has done - their alternate track listings have spanned multiple albums. Crazy stuff, takes genius and mad creativity to pull this off!

Also, Ticks & Leeches live blows my mind.

i would like to know how they use the fibonacci sequences in their music.

reply to post by sabbathcrazy


Hey friend - please see

Can also review at Lyric Wiki.

Let me know if you need anything else, but should be plenty of info out there if you search on Tool Fibonacci in most search engines.

reply to post by pforkp


Im not sure if this is the correct way, but 5 seconds crossfade on windows media player seems to make them all fit really nicely!

Is there something special about the number 5?

Also, anyone have any idea about the uncomfortable silence at the end of track 12 'Triad"

reply to post by grindhouzer

I'm running Linux so I had to make things difficult Couldn't get the crossfader to produce the sound I wanted so I ripped the CD, and cut out any silence before and after each track, and used gapless playback.

Man, did that pay off!! The transition between Schism and Ticks & Leeches is perfect - it definitely sounds like they go together. Same as Faap De Oaid (that creepy static track) and The Grudge. If you have the time, this is the way I recommend listening to it - makes it a different feeling album altogether.

reply to post by Praetorius

S+F,love tool too,that is friggin awesome,i did not know that thanks,great thread!!!

EDIT:Gonna rearrange lateralus on my IPOD right now!!!

reply to post by AdamsMurmur


This one's awesome as well, a star for you and wish I could also flag your response somehow

I found this through the Cracked article a few months back and had almost forgotten about it - if anyone else wants to check out some other strangeness from other bands & albums, you should take a look at 10 Mind-Blowing Easter Eggs Hidden in Famous Albums.

While you're there, check out their other articles, Cracked.com usually has a lot of great stuff!

Awesome! I love Tool!

I think my favorite of theirs is "Sober"

Oh no... OH NO... OH NO!

reply to post by Jepic


Oh hi! You came to scream?

Maynard screams for about 30 seconds full-force in The Grudge:



I can't seem to get the vid to start at a certain time here, but skip ahead to 6:56 for the goodies

I'm pretty sure soon after, his head exploded.

But I'm REALLY sure that because of this song and Ticks & Leeches, they can't play certain songs live anymore because Maynard shredded his throat.

reply to post by pforkp

Oh hi! You came to scream?

Maynard screams for about 30 seconds full-force in The Grudge:

Oh yeah?



How do you like THOSE apples?