https://soundcloud.com/user-744469074/sets/right-in-the-pneuma-angels-on-the-sideline
Download the track “All Characters Introduced” and play it in any program that allows you to speed it up or slow it down. This track was created by combining “Right in Two” with “Pneuma.” I also provided the individual audio tracks already in a form where I matched their lengths in special way. This would help anyone who wants to put them in audio software and make small adjustments to create more stories. This is just one alignment of the tracks. There are many, many more.
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On Friday night last week I combined the tracks “Right in Two” from 10,000 Days and “Pneuma” from Fear Inoculation. I am a classical musician, public school Orchestra teacher, and fan of Tool. So I recognized that multiple songs on the new album appeared to be a theme-and-variation of previous tracks. There have also been hints in the album packaging all the way back to Aenima and Lateralus that the albums should be combined, so I thought this might be the final lost key, the rosetta stone. After two days of no success in lining up the tracks, I happened to hear an unusual bell/flute like tone when the tracks were aligned in a specific way. When I aligned the track more fully, a new hidden sound appeared, and another. The album was built like decoder-ring adventure to solve. And every time I thought I had it solved, a new level or mystery would appear. After 8 days with only two nights sleep, I finally cracked the code of these albums, or at least as much as I am aware. This is what I believe:
Tool has kept a cutting-edge audio-production technique a secret since recording Aenima. They have a way of splitting the frequencies of a single sound (for example, a horn honking or a person speaking) into at least 4 parts. Then they split those parts across at least 2 album tracks. When I use audio software and shrink a track, 2 of the frequencies come into focus. Then you can do the same for the other track. Then align them and you have a single sound. Then, you have to align those tracks so that multiples sounds can be fitted together while not moving the fragments of your original sound away from each other.
What Tool has created is the most complex and prolific work of music in history. All of their albums combine to create a giant Quentin-Tarantino style movie. There are different characters, subplots, and locations. Each character has its own leitmotif, a musical theme that is heard when that character is involved in the story. The song meanings we all thought we understood have an entirely different meaning in the context of the “movie.” Before you disregard this because it sounds impossible, please understand that this was previously impossible. It is the confluence of art and technology.
The albums are actually even more complex than that. Think of the lyrics (or short portions of music) as a chain of envelopes. When you stretch the chain, the envelopes open, and new words that were too thin when shrunk now appear. Every 2nd envelope in the chain has letter written on it. When you collapse the chain, those letters form a new word. This is basically the conceptual theory behind how they designed this music. It is actually more complicated than that, and I found lining up the tracks was like solving a rubics cube within a rubics cube.
In order to allow songs to line up, songs must have some elements in common. Tool designed the lyrics in a way that some remain the same while others phase in and out. It is insanely complex. The instruments are coded so that the frequencies of other instruments actually combine to produce a specific desired sound. This particular mashup of “Right in Two” and “Pneuma” acts as a choose your own adventure story. If you adjust the tracks’ alignment slightly in one direction or another (or stretch/shrink) slightly different lyrics appear that change the outcome of the plot.
The reason that Tool has waited so many years between albums is that they have been tirelessly recording track after track to create this monumental work. They also recorded many of the more recently released tracks during their initial albums. There would be no other way to have to have the sound artifacts encoded in them if that were not the case.
If this weren’t monumental enough, the “central” mashup track to “Pneuma/Right” in Two acts a codex, displaying a myriad of tunes. By speeding up or slowing this particular alignment, I counted around 20 new songs before I moved on. The title “10,000 Days” now takes on a new meaning.
For those who want to try this, the best way is to use audio editing software that has warp or stretch, just resizing the files I posted will get you close to the “true” track, but you also have to make precise adjustments for all of the lyrics to appear. If you hear a track that has long pauses between lyrics, there are words that will appear there if you work at it at the smallest level of zoom. I’m just trying to get the word out, so some of my tracks are imprecise enough to be missing lyrics. Oh, also the waveforms of these 2 tracks and those that mash up with other albums form silhouettes that match the plots of many of the hidden tracks.
I’m exhausted. Being a part of this experience has been one of the most engaging and fulfilling artistic experiences of my life. I’ll check back here (if I’m awake) today or tomorrow. I’ve put my life on hold and might have lost one of my jobs in order to solve this, so thanks for understanding that I need to take this time to rest and catch up. Thank you to each member of Tool, the sound-production team, and everyone who contributed to this masterpiece. You have given me the thrill of a lifetime.