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Originally Posted by guitarpete987
Well I also play guitar (for 13 years, I'm no amateur) and I have to disagree. His riffs on 10,000 Days take his style to new places, for sure. Vicarious is the only song that kinda borrows from the past. He's never written a riff like Jambi. His low D-high D bendy thing on The Pot is pure simplistic genius (and his riff on the bridge is pure slightly more complex genius, another lick dissimilar from his past work), the most important musical element for most of Rosetta Stoned for me is his amazing guitar work, despite obvious references to the past (I think that was the idea on this one), his subtle touch entirely makes the mood work on Intension, and Right in Two, like it or not, is all about Adam's haunting clean tone intro, which also is a bit unlike what he's done before. And c'mon that wide-open riff heavy-ass riff after the tabla stuff ushers in the rest of the song unmistakably, and again showcases this master of simplicity.
I hardly believe he's out of ideas.
It's not that these riffs are hard to play or emulate. The genius in them is that that HE thought of them, and that no one else sounds like him. Unless they are copying his style, that is.
And as a songwriter, I can tell you it's a lot harder to come up with something simple and memorably effective than something complicated and showy.
Adam is irreplaceable. As are Danny and Justin. I'm with the school of thought that Maynard is replaceable, if only because I feel the core of the band's sound is in its instrumental sound more than anything else.
But dear god I hope he never is replaced, because his voice is such a perfect match to what the instrumentalists create.
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Thanks for articulating a lot of things I could not earlier. I've been playing for a pretty long time too, and it kills me when I hear people talk about how easy it is. I'm like, "Really? Then I must suck donkey balls cause it's taken me almost two years to get down most of the songs on Lateralus."
He's the one that thought of the riffs he uses first, and simple as they may be, he's the one that knew how to work them into Tool's songs. leefsnaspleaf has good point about him specialising in areas that are generally under-appreciated. Those areas being feedback control, and rhythm primarily.
I remember that when I was learning guitar my uncle told me that people don't appreciate rhythm very much anymore. I totally see what he's saying these days. It's like if you can play fast leads and shit, you're a great guitarist by default. I get tired of all the fucking leads though. There's more to a guitar than that. I have a friend who used to play on this guitar site where all they would do is battle eachother's lead capabilities and people would vote on which one was the fastest, and craziest. He could play all those fast futuristic leads like you'd hear on those F-Zero games. You know, those super annoying showboating pieces of shit leads.
Oh god! And he LOVED sweeps. Always with the fucking sweeps. He'd be playing and feel like he's going to slow then it's sweep after sweep after sweep. Then he'd play like two kinda sustained, airy chords slowly and belt into more rediculous sweeps. There was no doubt he was talented, but he totally took away from what the rest of the band was doing.
I think Adam does a good job of taking the minimalist approach and letting everything come together. A lot of guitarists these days have a nasty habit of pretending like they're playing by themselves, and I'm glad Adam's an exception.