Speakers
Aaron Hunt
Originally from Ewa Beach, Hawaii, composer and music theorist Aaron Hunt now resides in Watertown, Massachusetts. He has presented his compositions and research presentations at various conferences and festivals, such as College Music Society, Society for Music Theory, and The University of Tennessee Contemporary Music Festival. His compositions primarily focus on rhythm and texture, and feature strong influences of post-minimalism, spectralism, and progressive metal. Aaron's research interests gravitate around our perceptions of rhythm, timbre, and musical narrative, with a strong focus in analyzing popular music. Aaron holds a BM in Performance with an emphasis in Music Composition from Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee, and an MM in Music Composition with a certificate in Music Theory Pedagogy from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and has studied with Dr. Andrew Sigler, Dr. Brendan McConville, Dr. Nathan Fleshner, Dr. Greg Danner, and Dr. Yoomi Paick.
Rhythmic Hypnosis:
A Theory of Rhythm and Meter in the Music of Tool
​
Aaron Hunt
The beginning of the 1980’s saw the rise of progressive metal, a genre which combined the complex time signatures, disjunct melodies, and rhythmic and harmonic structures often associated with contemporary classical music with the aggressive stylizations of the metal and hard rock genres. Bands such as Queensrÿche, Dream Theater, and Tool quickly became some
of the leading names in defining this genre. Tool furthers the musical complexity of the genre by including many elements of psychedelic rock and avant-garde art rock, resulting in what many refer to as a spiritual or hypnotic sound. This musical aesthetic is further aided through the band’s usage of mathematics in their songwriting, disturbing and psychedelic imagery, and themes surrounding religion and sacred geometry. Ultimately, the band achieves this aesthetic with complex time signatures, fragmented polyrhythms, and extended usage of the tonic chord, but the band also relies heavily on groove as a key part of their sound.
In this paper I aim to show how the American prog rock band Tool creates auditory simplicity though its inherent complexity. I will display examples of this through various lenses of analysis as well as comparing the band’s music to that of other progressive metal bands such as Meshuggah and Dream Theater. The first directly deals with our ability as listeners to cognitively comprehend rhythmic structures. The second involves an analysis of polymetric patterns present in Tool’s Music. The final method will analyze the the band’s use of text painting and imagery to further this effect.
​
​