Artist Introduction
Uh Simone, now named Tofusmell, is a very small and undiscovered artist from Orlando, Florida. They began releasing music under the name Tofusmell in 2020 and, being only 21, they are rapidly gaining popularity, especially on TikTok, where they regularly post snippets of original songs and often get over 1000 likes on each post (TikTok, 2022), (tofusmell, n.d.). The videos are unedited and simple, using only the phone speaker to record the vocals and guitar. I found Tofusmell through the TikTok algorithm as have many others, and he now has a small, dedicated fanbase that enjoys his music that is posted on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Spotify and Youtube.
Their music delves into genres like folk, slowcore and grunge, and has musical ties with artists like ‘Whatever, Dad’, ‘Field Medic’, ‘Alex G’ and ‘Elliott Smith’. He writes, records, mixes and masters all of his music himself, using only minimal recording equipment, instruments and a laptop at home. Their lyrics often touch upon topics such as life experiences, love, mental health, and, being a trans artist, gender identity. His lyrics are generally powerful and meaningful, and musical wise, their songs are very intriguing, using extended, suspended and augmented chords to express a range of emotions. Many of their songs are solely acoustic, being very thin textured. However, the song below changes dramatically both texturally and dynamically.
Song Analysis
I enjoy the song as it expresses so many different emotions through the change in texture by the end of the song. I love the raw, fairly unedited sound they longed for purposefully to achieve that lo-fi, grunge impression. It inspires me for this project as this is the path I want to take instrument-wise; a consciously incomplete sound, keeping small mistakes and stripping back on effects and high-tech equipment. The trumpet addition is quite unconventional for a song of this genre however it works very well. Perhaps this is something I could look at for the instrumentation for our own songs.
The instrumentation of the song is fairly simple throughout, resembling a generic live instrument set up consisting of drums, bass, both electric and acoustic guitar, and vocals. However, as I mentioned above, the trumpet adds some interest to the instrumentation as it is not a common instrument to include in grunge, alternative rock songs like this. The dynamics are probably one of my favourite features as it adds so much energy to the end of the song compared to the start, which is very quiet and soft. Because of this, there is a huge shift in texture by the end of the song, where many guitars are layered up and the drums play louder. At the start of the song, the texture is fairly thin, consisting of airy vocals and harmonies, acoustic guitar playing the main part and electric guitar playing accents and licks, a trumpet, and a simple bassline, making the dynamics stand at around p. At 1:02, the shaker and drums kick in, in the form of a marching snare and the harmonies become more prominent, lifting the song’s energy and creating a change in dynamics to around mp. The second verse, at 1:28, contains more guitar parts, and the harmonies become the forefront of the song. There is a short guitar solo, which moves the song into the next section, where the vocals become heavier and the drums have moved to the ride cymbal; here the dynamics are f. Finally, the ending section is ff and full-textured, and this is down to the drums and the distorted guitar. There is a spoken-word piece in this section, but everything is so deliberately loud that you can hardly make out what they are saying.
The harmonies in this song are beautifully made and have been constructed to create space, character and to emphasise certain lyrics. The dreamy background harmonies are a form of vocalisation as often they are not singing actual words but instead making vowel sounds and adlibs to vivify the song and give it life. At this point, they act as the chordal section especially in the start as there are no actual instruments playing full chords; the guitar is fingerpicked and there is no piano in the song. As well as vocalising, they also harmonise on actual lyrics, such as the word ‘migrating’ and ‘crosseyed’. The lyrics ‘clearly’ and ‘seeing two’ use staggered harmonies, having the harmonising vocal come in after the initial lyric. This is really interesting and creates depth in the vocals; I would like to experiment with this idea for our own songs.
In terms of rhythms, it is fairly simple, and the song is swung. The bassline plays semibreves for the intro, slowly introducing minims and eventually crotchets before the change in structure. The drums join the mix in the form of a double-time marching snare, with the accents on the ‘and’ of every beat and the kick on every crotchet, but also using quaver rhythms on occasions. The drum playing is a little bit sloppy and imperfect, however, this creates that grunge, lo-fi feel that the artist wanted. The drums are simple, which is fairly standard for rock and grunge and allows the listener to focus on different things, such as the lyrics and vocal harmonies which take the song to the next level. After the guitar solo appears many guitar rhythms that overlap and contrast with each other, creating this almost chaotic sounding syncopation that I struggle to make sense of, giving elements of shoegaze and post-punk.
This song’s structure is quite hard to define as there is no repeating lyrics or sections, however, I can loosely define the different sections being: Intro, verse, pre-chorus, verse, solo, pre-chorus, chorus (but this may not be the artist’s intended structure). This is a fairly unconventional structure as it is quite rare to see pre-choruses without a chorus that follows, and a solo straight after a verse. The pre-chorus into verse structure is deceiving as you expect the chorus to follow. There is no ‘outro’ as such, other than the final note ringing out after the disorderly chorus.
The tempo is 9oBPM (andante) and can be described as at a walking pace and moderate. This may seem like the song is relaxed, however, the drums play in double time, therefore making the song feel a bit more fast-paced than it really is. The time sig is 4/4, or common time. However, by the end when the distorted guitar comes in, it almost turns to free time. The timing becomes more chaotic by the last four bars as the snare hits move out of time but the instruments manage to end on the ‘one’ of the final bar.
The key is G#m and uses this scale to create melodies and chords. One of the most notable melodies is from the acoustic guitar playing the fingerpicking pattern, which stays prominent throughout. The vocals also have a strong melody that tends to change throughout depending on the section. The chords move around the chords in the G#m scale, generally using G#m, C#m, B, A#dim, Dm, E and F# but with extensions such as 6th,7th,9th and 11ths notes.
There isn’t too many mixing techniques and effects used on the track, keeping the song sounding lo-fi and raw, which was intended. However, they used lots of reverb on background vocal harmonies to make them sound distant and so the different layers of harmonies merge together well. As well as this, they use distortion on the vocals at 1:55. This is quite typical for a grunge/rock song as it gives the vocals some heaviness and works well with the loud ending. However mostly fairly clean throughout, using only minimal effects like a chorus and slight flanger, the guitar also uses distortion which is normal for many songs and a range of genres.