Alright, I'm sitting here watching a Tool bootleg I downloaded (Radio City 8-13-02) and thinking about how much I love this band, and thinking about the musicians in it.
Every guy in that band is amazingly talented. Danny Carey's one of my favourite drummers and is, in my opinion one of the best. Justin Chancellor is probably my favourite bass player, or top 3 at the very least. Maynard's got an amazing voice and can write meaningful lyrics and perfect melodies over fucking anything. Adam Jones...
And here's where I get to. I know Adam Jones is a great guitarist, and I love everything he does, but it's a little hard to tell people he's a great guitarist, because they'll immediately go to the tried and true "I can play that, it's not that hard, it's all in drop-D anyways..." and so on. And they're not wrong. I haven't heard anything on a Tool album on guitar that I don't think I could play or I sit there wondering how he did it. And yet, I know he's a great guitarist.
So, I'm reading the latest Guitar World interview with him (great issue btw), and it all becomes clear. Adam Jones isn't a great guitarist because he can play flashy licks at a million notes a second, and he's not a great guitarist because he's doing things that no one's ever done before. He's a great guitarist because everything he does is just so damn perfect. Everything fits flawlessly, and his dynamics, tone, phrasing, etc. is just plain beautiful. Sure, I could play most of the things he's written, but could I write it? Hell no.
And same goes for the rest of the guys in the band. It sounds really complicated together as a band, but breaking it down, they're not over-playing or showing off. Everything's just so well crafted to fit together in interesting ways that it sounds like nothing else. And it sounds huge, despite being only one guitar, one bass, and one drummer. Hell, there's not even a huge number of vocal overdubs. Their live shows sound like the album (and better) because there's really not a lot extra going on in their albums. Just four guys who can create music like no one else.
I had a friend, and fellow Tool fan, say he couldn't figure out the time signature of "Schism", and I realized I'd never even thought about it. The feel of their music is so strong that it just flows naturally. When I learned that song, I didn't even think of the time signature, or count it in my head, I just went by feel. And I know that's how they write. They don't try to be uber-complex, they just create what comes naturally to them, and what they want to hear, and they try to do something different from themselves and everyone else every time they pick up their instruments. And in the latest Guitar World, there's a tab of "Schism", and the first verse switches between 5/8 and 7/8, at which point I immediately thought "Well, that makes sense, it's just 6/8, with the downbeat displaced". Really, the whole song could be written out in 6/8 and it'd make sense, but to try and write down the feel, that's how you have to do it. And it looks complicated, but it's really just moving notes around, adding and subtracting beats here and there.
I'm not a Tool worshipper, or one of those "Maynard is God" people, I know they're just regular guys who love making music. I just think they're pretty freaking good at it
Wow...long post