Marigolds - a jazzy bit of work.

Hi guys,

Here's a jazzy piece of work. It all started with a drum pattern that I liked to explore, and this is what it developed into. Hope you like it.

I caught the kid off guard
Picking flowers from our lawn
And was ambushed by the pique
That was echoed in my tone

Still canvassing myself
As I frenzied for a way
To find my mood a shelf
For the incident

It felt best to insist
That the boy was but a thief
For that couldn’t be a lie
Obscured by make-believe

Tell me that is right
Tell it right into my face
Whisper it and double down
I’d like me to believe it

Back inside our house
There’s a whiff of frying ham
 I sliced a sheath of leak
And thought about the jam

A boy who pilfers marigolds
For love or joy or play
To please his mom or bashful friend
Now would that be the same?

If ham and facts or daisies
For possiblies and maybies
Decide what’s on my mind
Then what’s on his?

https://soundcloud.com/pleudoniem/marigolds



And just for the heck of it, I also remastered another old song that somebody played on SoundCloud again. It is called Game, Set, Match. I wrote it in 2008, if the date on the master-file is correct.

https://soundcloud.com/pleudoniem/game-set-match

Ah - nice, a brand new @Pleudoniem  track.
Cool guitar work.
I try to make an image of how one can be ambushed by 'a pique'.
very much liking the broad synth that comes in a 1.00 m.
Tip for diversity in the singing, to not always bend the note downwards a the end of a phrase.

@oorlab Ok, I've changed the vocal falls a bit. I know that to be a problem with my singing. Any better now?

Good idea to lower the drums in the later part a bit. It adds to the interaction.

That isn't a synth at 1:00, that is my bowed standup bass

Oh, so there is a bass after all?
I like the song @15.44 @Pleudoniem , but for lack of a bass, I found it a bit bottomless.
Maybe a matter of taste?
Kind regards, Gus

There IS a bass in it, I can hear it clearly. It is a Fender P-Bass, to be exact. I'll change the settings, so that it penetrates a bit more.

I've just added an envelope generator to the bass, and added some compression. Let's see if it stands out a bit better now.

I think that @oorlab and @LePlongeur give different interpretations of the same problem, namely that the drums were a bit too loud. They overpowered the bass. I've turned them down a bit now. I think that works better.

Your instrumentation on this seems really nicely balanced now @Pleudoniem  (I have read the earlier comments). Love that bass. Love that guitar....etc. Have you thought about perhaps doubling up or harmonising a few lines occasionally just to add variety to the vocals?

@redmando Doubling erm? I could give it a try. The monotony was worse when I got the earlier comments and I think I've managed to change that a bit , but I could give doubling a try as well.

@redmando Doubling erm? I could give it a try. The monotony was worse when I got the earlier comments and I think I've managed to change that a bit , but I could give doubling a try as well.

  I didn't find it monotonous @Pleudoniem  - just thought that adding a little bit of extra vocal sprinkled about  would make it more interesting. But, it is your song to do with what you think works.

@redmando No worries I didn't think YOU thought it was monotonous, but I was reflecting on a different comment that I tend to use vocal falls at the end of lines, and that I could vary a bit more. I've heard this before, and they have a point.

I took your comment in its own right. Even if it is my song, other people may say very useful things, and so did you. I'm inclined to make use of comments when I think I can. Same for @LePlongeur's comment, which really surprised me, but I don't have his ears, he hears what he hears. Your idea has been used in the song as well as his now, as you may hear.

Yes, you’re right. This seems to have been the problem. Did you mute the bass or do you use flatwounds?
Kind regards, Gus;

@LePlongeur I do use flatwounds, but not on this particular bass. I have a number of bass guitars here in my little studio. Normally, flat or round shouldn't cause such a problem, it's just that the note dynamics are very different.

The thing is that the kick drum in the drum track had quite a bit of low in it, and I suspect that this drowned the bass notes. Lowering the overall drum volume made the bass stand out a bit better. I also used more compression, upped the higher frequencies of the amp a bit, and tried a different amp simulation. Easy to do, I use Amplitube to do this.