Two months ago, my student Maksim came to a lesson with this song and announced, "I want to play this!" I was terrified! Not only did he want to learn a song by one of the most intricate bands in metal history, he'd already learned almost all of it before the lesson. Tool's "Schism" is a masterpiece that won the 2002 Grammy for Best Metal Performance. The meter shifts throughout the whole song, and after the lesson I spent four hours counting bars, desperately trying to find the downbeat. The band jokingly calls the time signature "6½", and all in all I counted 48 meter changes in a single song. Insane! And now we've recorded it, and Maksim played it absolutely perfectly. Proud of you, man! 🎸
