Speakers
Nicole Biamonte
Nicole Biamonte is associate professor of music theory at McGill University. She holds a PhD in theory from Yale University, and has also studied piano and choral conducting. Her primary research areas are the theory and analysis of popular music (pitch structures, meter and rhythm, form, and most recently timbre), 19th-century musical historicism, and music theory pedagogy. She published the edited collection Pop-Culture Pedagogy in the Music Classroom, and is a past editor of Music Theory Online.
Unity in Tool’s Fear Inoculum
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Nicole Biamonte & Jerry Cain
The progressive rock/metal band Tool’s long-awaited fifth studio album Fear Inoculum(2019) consists of seven extended songs plus three interlude tracks, deriving from drummer Danny Carey’s original conception of the album as one long track. In interviews, the band has identified the number seven as a unifying theme of the album. This paper examines septuple structures in Fear Inoculum, going beyond the obvious—seven main tracks, numerous septuple grooves, seven-pointed star images, and orthography of “7empest”—to explore deeper-level septuple groupings of rhythm and form. This leads to a consideration of other unifying factors on the album: formal, tonal, motivic, and lyric relationships within and between the main multipart songs and connecting interludes, as well as process techniques and other aspects of minimalism.