Tool "The Pot" REACTION & ANALYSIS by Vocal Coach / Opera Singer

welcome back to the charismatic voice so many of you have been asking for us to return to tulle so that's what we're gonna do today specifically we're gonna be listening to the pot this comes from the album ten thousand days which won a grammy in 2007 for best recording project and the pot specifically was nominated in 2008 for another grammy so i guess it comes pretty highly recommended i am a little bit familiar with tulle i went to a concert a few years ago and i'm told that the pot was on the set list but i didn't really know any of their songs at the time so it was all pretty new to me but that means i have heard it before but i definitely have not heard it recently i was not familiar with it at the time so i think this is going to feel like a really fresh take definitely looking at the lyrics i i didn't remember them from before wow they are intense it seems to be about hypocrisy especially surrounding drug culture and judgment in marijuana too so i think this is going to get very deep and i'm looking forward to it let's get to it who are you to wave your finger you must have been out your hair i hold deep and muddy waters you practically raised [Music] house of cards [Music] hi [Music] okay before it really gets going in here i'm gonna go back to the beginning and catch this again of course of course because we do that a lot on this channel go back to the beginning and this is because there's so much often to take in in these first few moments of listening to a song it's like it feels almost overwhelming to not get to hear it more than once so we're gonna go back one of the things that really caught my ear was that there seems to be like a really light echo slash delay i almost wondered if i even heard it um it but it seemed like it was back in there so i'm going to listen for that again i really love the cleanliness of maynard's vocals and the way he relates the words he always seems to have some pent-up energy too which is really interesting like there's about some anger about to burst it's uh i think it's a wonderful way to not necessarily overflow with emotion but it feels like there's always emotion bubbling right underneath the surface in his voice uh oh and man when the drums came in i i really like danny carey's drumming i do remember one of my huge takeaways from that tool concert was a new appreciation for drums i just couldn't believe what i was seeing during that entire concert it was like wow what he's a he's a god on drums it's just amazing so anyhow i love the way that the drums came in on one side of the headphones sort of migrated over to another side uh there's so many different kinds of timbres within the drums as well it's really cool okay back who are you too yeah wave your finger you must have been out your hair i hold it oh that's so weird there is like an echo that comes in before the most present melody comes in i don't know why they did that but that's a really cool production element it makes my ears perk up before you even get the main line it's an interesting way of grabbing attention i should mention as well we've chosen to do a version from the album with album art here rather than an official music video or a live performance and that's because there isn't an official music video and there wasn't a good live performance recording uh with with great audio quality so i wanted to listen to something that had really beautiful audio quality i'm also very interested in how they produced it since it won a grammy so let's go back to speaking one more time who are you to wave your finger you must have been out your head [Music] rob the grave to the snow the cradle then burn the evidence down [Music] you must have been [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh oh man i i love the way that danny carey is throwing us off the time signature scent every now and then in here um i does seem like at this point once we had like the whole band enter and it felt like it really feels like the instruments arrived in a quote chorus and that was when we had an indication of this is the arrival of like the main theme of the song or something and that's i think that's so cool the way that the instruments play just as big of a role as the vocal does in tools music it's really spectacular especially considering how talented and well just really dedicated and extremely good each of these musicians are at the very beginning it was interesting to listen and i wasn't able to catch a time signature initially i would think i had it for a moment and i would think that it switched and then we entered um i think it was right around you must have been high it seemed like right there i got a really clear sense of that 4 4 entering in and then in the next set of what i call like the next measure all of a sudden i hear a really strong beat that isn't on what i would consider the downbeat and then it returned to 4 4 and then there was that strong beat on what didn't seem like the downbeat again i think that danny carey is just messing with us i think that there actually is a 4-4 out throughout the entire time but it's really fun how he likes to throw something in that makes us us like feel almost doubtful like reality just had a sudden shift and you're not really sure where you are so i'm gonna go back to that part see if i can find it count it out with you guys [Music] right here so up until that point it almost sounds like uh ah it almost sounds like we have different time signatures going in different instrumental parts sometimes which is super cool i'm not sure that's actually happening but the way that they're accenting certain notes makes it difficult to find a certain definite downbeat but i'll show you where's the first downbeat that i'm like yeah that's it right there boom two three four one two three four one two three four one two three four one two three four now danny throws us off right here [Applause] two three four one two uh-uh right there's a little bit of angularity and that's because he's essentially hitting like more of a a strong beat if you're looking just at the uh amplitude or volume of that drum kit it gets uh suddenly louder instead of on the downbeat it happens right after and that's what makes it feel like one of those measures feels slightly off that's a really cool way of messing with your audience it's complicated and fun and probably has some deeper meaning because these guys have deep meaning in every single thing they do okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] until you pull it out that was some fun expression i'm digging the way that maynard really goes to his diphthongs uh early and accentuates them so uh one of the really good examples was out instead of out which out is a diphthong meaning that there's two vowels in it an ah and an out bout both of those are diphthongs and most singers would linger on the first vowel of that pair and then close to the second one very quickly that's sort of the standard way that's trained otherwise you get a very interesting effect but maynard's like no no i want to go for the effect and so he goes and really hangs out on the oh part of it there's a couple times he does that during this verse i'll point him out [Music] right oh i could have had better timing talking about instead of talking about talking about [Music] i love that out pull it out has this slide that leans into the ooh vowel early as well it like has a little extra snarl in there i'm also just loving the stylization he also often has this like sort of dip um like just slight slides and it sounds like they're almost always the same amount away from the pitch that he slides into each time it's pretty cool [Music] [Music] innocence [Applause] his consonants have so much energy in them it's like they're sizzling with that same pent-up emotional energy it feels like it's almost like furious like anger that's sizzling underneath all the time and you hear him just lash that out in the consonants and it's great because he has so much energy in his vocal uh really his vowels as well you need to have a certain matching energy i think um sometimes people don't match the energy and they just use production to help them with that but i don't think that's what minor does especially at this point um it doesn't sound like he's got tons of like extra compression and like all kinds of plugs on his voice um it sounds like he's really doing this uh with his own voice instead of adding the layers on top so i like the way that it sizzles in the consonant and then stays present in the vowel and then sizzles in the consonant again that's very impressive to me i like that it's carrying the energy all the way through and i also really love the way that he is so clean about his pitch he's really specific and always always on the money it's great it's fantastic and yet at the same time he'll still add little slides in there but they tend to be really tasteful and then when he lands he lands so clearly on a pitch it's really just beautiful mastery i think of being able to adjust the pitch a little bit or just be right there in the center of it [Music] okay so that h on hung the juror is a great example of putting tons of extra energy in a consonant so a lot of people just say hung the juror and there's very little air that's shot through that h h has a lot of aspiration it he he really like channels a whole bunch hung and h's are one of the more difficult consonants to also project so you really hear him putting a ton of extra behind it one more time [Music] it's so easy for an age to get lost and i hear that one clearly which is beautiful [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh that was a good run [Music] oh that's a nice belt too it's a clean belt i loved the run there earlier as well it was really um it was fast it was specific yeah i love that he's a very specific singer it has tons of specificity and i bet you were also thinking dang those are good h's every time he said hi each time he's got great enunciation it's fantastic all right we'll keep [Music] going like that [Music] [Music] wow oh man it's it's kind of sounding like that uh angry energy is starting to erupt now it's like wow that's intense and uh also in the instruments that sliding note right before this section really builds a lot of tension um makes me kind of shudder a little this uh i feel like there's a ton of emotion that's spilling over in here right who are you to wave your fingers so full of it eyeballs deep in muddy waters uh hypocrites so i think it's just really clear to me uh hypocrisy was the big message that i got when i was going through these works first were um essentially somebody judging somebody else that is not like that person is going to be doing exactly what the other person is doing and i understand like how that would be incredibly frustrating and not just that but you know enough to write a song about with this kind of emotion um the oh the lyrics definitely paint a picture of um someone who is essentially using marijuana while judging somebody who for using marijuana and there's just this system of like well whoever gets caught gets caught and it doesn't seem like it's fair so i think um i think the song correctly captures the emotions of feeling the unfairness of a system like this let's go back a little bit and then keep going [Music] [Applause] nice flies up there too [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh it was like a nice fry scream right there wow that was fun i was busy listening to um the way that the instruments um especially i think the guitar seems to have like uh a shutter almost like it's glitching at times and so it's just really interesting um sounds to me in the way they're combining put that for ice cream okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] just popped out [Music] [Music] [Music] really interesting to hear that shift uh here so i they had started following enough patterns that i was wanting to expect certain things and right here the instrumentals just just shifted they stayed at the time same time signature but i started to hear a different melodic pattern in the bottom which is curious to me not sure why that shift happened um another thing uh well let's go back a little bit and point it out [Music] yeah i i feel like i hear a doubling of maynard in there i think that maybe they doubled his voice um or had him sing over the same track not sure uh i thought i heard a couple different voices in there at one point though which is interesting i didn't catch that earlier so it might be building it is really noteworthy to say though that his voice is coming through so clearly in this i love the vocal production of it because a lot of times when you have massive sound happening in other instruments it can cloud over a voice and i'm just hearing tons of really great clarity in maynard's voice right now let's go back just a little bit more see if that doubling is happening in b yeah there's well there's a harmony it might just be a stereo verbs [Music] that's such a cool shift [Music] who are you where are [Music] you oh man i i love the way that built up to this release um that it started really back at that shift in the melodic material um underneath and that was also shifting a little bit of harmonic material there had a really great build and released right here oh cool um and that as far as that doubling is going we heard a little bit of harmony there but i think that maybe you've got also double the voice but it might just be some production as far as like a delay and reverb that's happening is because i'm getting quite um it feels like i have a maynard's voice that's up close and one that's also back further away in the mix just very interesting okay keep going boom [Music] [Music] oh oh what a cool instrumental section there i love the way um danny kerry uses pitch within the drums it felt like something ran up and then ran away and you can hear that partly in volume but also how he's using different pitches in within his drums oh i that was really fun uh let's go practice a little bit oh the distortion is crazy [Music] i just feel like he makes me think of a drum kit in a different way it's unique it's incredible i i really love the way it feels like he has created sometimes a melodic instrument of the drums which are just fundamentally not melodic right and i think it's interesting how it feels like he plays in waves he's definitely a drummer i would study endlessly and if ever i was going to learn how to play drums i would say like it'd be fun to learn i'm sure every everybody probably says this that plays drums but i feel like i would idolize danny carey's playing and aim for that the most [Music] uh [Music] really cool he was like focusing on just certain areas of the drum kit in there so you can hear like oh we're gonna focus more with some cymbals like more kicks in here i'll have like a lot more toms in this area i like the way that he'll remove something um that you would normally hear in like a standard pattern and that allows us to focus in on the sound and the differences and how he might focus on one particular type of drum it's very very cool obviously i don't actually um play drums i just do beatboxing and because of that i actually go and i listen to quite a few drums and think about how can i make that sound and it's um it's really fun when i get to hear drummers like danny carey and think about how would i make that sound just using my mouth and my vocal tract so anyhow really inspiring let's keep going [Applause] [Music] i like that transition that's fun [Applause] [Music] really that's very effective because we've had such a drawn out instrumental section here that it can be a lot of sound that is coming at a person sometimes we can become numb to the different kinds of sounds and the wall of sound that's there so if you take that away you slow it down and then you have a vocal come in and have it just be the vocal it's a nice way to add it back in there and then bring them all together [Applause] [Music] is [Music] uh i want to speak a little bit to kangaroo because this was something i had to read about uh before doing this song because i saw in the lyrics this kangaroo thing i'm like well what does a kangaroo have to do with judging and this is taken from the word kangaroo court which is essentially like an unofficial court that's held to judge someone and there's a predetermined outcome so essentially a very unfair judicial system which again is coming back to this big theme of the song uh so i just wanted to throw that out there because i know for me i was like why why is a kangaroo judging and why is a kangaroo stoned and lots of big questions about this kangaroo it has to do with the kangaroo court okay cool [Music] [Music] i love the way he kind of growls on you must have been let's go back to listen to that because i like it oh that dissonance is crazy [Music] [Music] is [Music] okay that was an awesome note um i believe he's singing mind yeah um you spent out of your mind right that was beautifully held it was super stable had a little bit of fry on it too you really hear that angers just pouring out the energy in it it's fantastic let's go back quite a bit here i love the build it's just it's really nicely constructed he even uses tars he even almost like goes through a diphthong with our ours are very strange our colored vowels and he leans into it here as well so kind of similar to what he was doing at diphthongs earlier [Music] is it's like that is such a gutsy note he didn't even get a breath right before he takes it he sings a note on the bottom and then jumps up so that means he's got to really set up that bottom note well and make sure he's got a good breath it's really good breath planning but set that bottom up well so that that top note can continue for such a long time this is the kind of note that does well with tons of pre-planning if you hadn't already guessed a lot of times people when they're singing a low note and immediately connects to a high note what they'll do is they'll try to hike up all the sound from the low note and instead the better approach is usually to think where is this high note going to end up okay i'm going to dip down for the feeling we're gonna keep that high note feeling and dip down with that feeling to sort of snatch that low note into the high note instead so take the overall phrase feeling from the high note instead of the low note essentially and i can hear that he's really set himself up well well let's do that one more time [Music] great [Music] oh is there no resolution there oh [Music] cool i love the intricacy of tools music there's so many specific details that each band member is adding they're all uh incredibly technically proficient and i love the way that the specificity that each band member has with their instrument contributes to this beautiful complexity that's fun to try to unravel maynard's vocals in particular i think are perfectly suited for this band it makes so much sense in the context it feels independent of other members yet still going together and it also feels like it's not always the star of the show it gives room to the instrumentalist to also be the stars at different moments and i love that brewing fury that you can hear in his voice at any given moment it's great loved the extra bit of screams in there we heard as well but they were really tastefully placed it wasn't uh the whole time he really brought it in at specific moments to give us a little taste of that fury and then brought it back and contained it which was fascinating to hear i also love the way he's very specific with his diction i think it's very telling that he is uh such a clean vocalist and uh and such a careful artist in designing how each and every note is approached very impressive overall uh if you have any specific interpretations that i didn't talk about we'd love to hear them down in the comments below and also if you have any other recommendations please post those in the comments below as well we check those we track your recommendations so know that you are heard and if you would like to be heard some more you can come and say hello to me every single monday tuesday and friday i am here on youtube at 8 o'clock am arizona time for a live premiere you can also find me on patreon and i have courses about music in general and singing at thecharismaticvoice.com see you somewhere soon [Music]

Channel: The Charismatic Voice

Views: 196,659

Rating: 4.9463143 out of 5

Keywords: tool reaction, danny carey, reaction vocal coach, the charismatic voice, tool the pot reaction, maynard james keenan, vocal coach reacts to tool, progressive metal, prog rock, tool reaction the pot, tool reaction video the pot, tool reaction video lateralus, reaction tool 10000 days, tool 10000 days

Id: PUvtrsLXFjQ

Length: 33min 17sec (1997 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 24 2021