Tool, Math Rock, and the Fibonacci Sequence

Courtesy of Daniel Miessler's blog comes this YouTube video, featuring one of my favorite heavy rock bands, Tool, and a suggestion that the one of the tracks on Lateralus was composed with the Fibonacci Sequence in mind:

The author of the YouTube video is not the first person to make this connection. I never thought about the meter used in the lyrics, but I have heard the band's music called "math rock" before. I first started getting into Tool about seven or eight years ago, and I probably conducted half of my thesis research while listening to Lateralus and 10,000 Days. At 11:30 in the evening, when I was plowing through scores of database searches and manually updating my spreadsheets, having Tool playing in the background could keep me going for another hour or two. The music was methodical, ethereal, and strangely comforting. The ritual I developed required me to keep studying until the last song on the album (either Faaip De Oaid on Lateralus or Viginti Tres on 10,000 Days) had faded. Then I could shut down the computer and go to sleep ... or put on some classical music and keep going.

While I'm on the topic, here's a playlist of the albums I regularly listened to while working on the thesis -- as well as music that I found impossible to study to.