This has been a difficult week… I was sick with a fever this past weekend, all 3 of the younger kids have been sick, and our youngest has had a high fever (104+). We took him to the doctor today, and he has pneumonia. He’s on a round of antibiotics. I expect he’ll be fine. But… my wife hasn’t been able to do much other than nurse him, which means I haven’t been able to do much other than the things mom has been too busy to do, and no one has been sleeping well. Will do what I can for round 3, and I am grateful to Ken for giving us an extra weekend, but it isn’t looking too promising at the moment.

That bears repeating. Actually this is true in a much larger sense: the song that is going to be the most popular in *any* setting depends a lot on the setting. You have to know your audience, or find it, or create it. In this case, a lot of the audience is made up of songwriters and the kind of songs that appeal to songwriters might be different than the kind that appeals to your intended audience. So figure out who you’re writing for. You might write to please yourself or to please some ideal fan in your head or some specific fan or set of fans in the real world.

If *you* are happy with a song, it might still bomb with some particular audience because they weren’t in the mood for that song at that time.

So let’s see what the list of skills are that this contest works on. They include:

(1) songwriting chops – be able to write a decent song on about any topic or given various restrictions
(2) music recording/production chops – be able to make your song sound good
(3) judging your audience – be able to meet or exceed expectations in some context
(4) motivating your fan base – publicize yourself in a way that you can get out the vote quickly when you need to

…and do all that under time pressure. Yow!

All four of those are important skills to real-world success – getting people to hear and enjoy your music – so I’m glad to have the chance to think about and improve them.

Plus: however many songs you’ve written before, you’ll have written *more* after this contest, and that’s worth something all by itself. Pat yourself on the back, everyone!

*applause*

Paul: I did put some real effort into it. I was quite pleased with the result …

That’s what matters.

Some songs are going to be popular, some aren’t.

Votes will never do anything for you, they will only do things to you. (With the glaring exception of the one artist who gets the most votes.)

The experience, however will do things for you.

…wonder just why I gave up so many hours of sleep and time with my family to hole myself up in my too-small, too-hot office/studio in order to work on this song…

Did you enjoy the process? Did you have moments of despair followed by triumph?

Did you learn something? Did you discover something about yourself? About songwriting? About how to ventilate your office better?

Not only that, but by my count, you got two bonus comments above, which you wouldn’t have gotten if you’d just written this song for yourself (“I think I’ll go write a song that doesn’t rhyme. In a week. Just for fun.”).

Don’t let a low vote count eat away at your joy. That’s no way to live.

I haven’t seen one post that has said just ‘Vote for me’. It’s been a focus on – come, listen, and vote for 5 – and we’d appreciate if you give us one of them if you’re a fan.

Personally, I think it’s the deadline and having to get something in that you can deal with on quality, as opposed to spending weeks tweaking it and not releasing it is what I take away from Song Fu. Unless its due, it doesn’t get totally finished because other projects seem to take priority.

I also like that many of the voters and contestants give positive critiques and reviews. There have been a few that haven’t been kind, but those have been the exception. That helps inspire when you work on the next project. I have seen many people here grow as artists just between the last 2 Song Fus.

Mike surprised me by stretching out of his comfort zone with an acapella tune, and did a good job with it. Zeroguy made me laugh by repeating Power Chords so many times. Caleb hit out out of the park with a mix of almost rhymes and a tongue twister of a word and a bouncy track. Everyone is trying to mix it up, which makes for an interesting challenge to choose just 5 to vote for.

I’m very excited to see what people come up with for the next challenge. I think I know where people are headed, but I’m expecting to be surprised with the results. We still haven’t locked down an idea yet, but I’m confident we’ll have something by Sunday night. Because we have to. We’re in the Fu. And that’s why it’s fun.

BoffoYux

Putting the timing & my views aside…I just didn’t find it catchy enough to get a vote. Not that the music is bad, but it was just an uphill battle to start with all things considered.

There are several good reasons to compete in Song Fu. The first is the challenge. Having an interesting challenge that forces you to write outside your comfort zone can actually be inspiring, it can make writing a song easier than trying to come up with everything from scratch.

The second is the deadline. I have had LOTS of ideas for songs that never get committed to paper, let alone recorded. The fact is, to compete in Song Fu, you have to turn in SOMETHING, anything before the end of the week. It might not be as perfect and polished as you would want, but at least it’s there.

Song Fu is a learning experience. I’ve learned a lot about recording technique and song craft. I’ve learned about cowriting and getting things done on time. Beyond that, I’ve learned that to get the votes in Song Fu you need a fan base. And to have a fan base, you can’t just sit around and wait for one to come to you. It’s not an “If you write it, they will come” situation. Godz Poodlz are actively working at gathering fans. Some of that comes from networking, like having a MySpace Page, a facebook fan page, a twitter account for the band or a bandcamp page where folks can download all our songs. Some of the networking comes from interacting on TMA. And it’s helped! Godz Poodlz are having our best showing in Song Fu so far! It’s easier to get fans on board if you are willing to ask in many ways, “Will you be my fan?”

Finally, the big bonus from Song Fu is the cameraderie and friendships that have been built with the other competitors. I think it’s partly the team spirit fostered by facing the same challenge. It’s partly because there is NO money on the line, there doesn’t have to be any over-riding jealousy or bitterness from the vote. It’s also nice to have the respect of people who are trying to do the same thing. Godz Poodlz have never been at the top of the Song Fu vote, but we feel like we’ve gained the respect of folks that we admire. We feel like Godz Poodlz is developing a reputation for bringing creative quality to the Song Fu table. It’s also nice that Godz Poodlz numbers among our fans many of our Song Fu competitors, including a lot of the folks who regularly pwn us in the vote!

One thing that has set Song Fu 6 apart from previous seasons of the Fu has been the amount of collaboration! This is in large part due to our resident Song Fu Master, Joe Covenant Lamb! Joe worked on your song. He sang on Denise’s. He had Buckethat Bobby play accordian on his tune. I think this is marvelous. It’s made some of the songs of Song Fu 6 some of the best of Song Fu! (And yeah, I’m talking about “Polly Loves the Rain.”)

I’d just like to thank Mike Lombardo and Jeff MacDougall again for creating the web community, “Too Much Awesome.” http://toomuchawesome.org I think it’s very cool that nearly every Song Fu competitor in Song Fu 6 is also member of TMA! This has only added to the spirit of friendship, comraderie and collaboration that the Fu should be about.

Paul, think about the reaction that “Polly Loves the Rain” got from Jules Sherred. That ONE person’s reaction was a greater prize than winning any vote in any round. She said she played that song over and over again, she couldn’t get enough of it. She made you Artist of the Week on her blog. She told all her friends to vote for you, said that it would be a travesty if you didn’t win the vote. I’d pay money to figure out how to get more sincere and enthusiastic fans like that.

The Song Fu vote is never a direct reflection on the quality of the songs. But it’s too easy to fool yourself into thinking that it is. There are lots of quality songs that don’t get the numbers of votes that they deserve.

All that said, I still worry about the vote. I’m constanly thinking, “ARGH! If we could just scrape together 8 more votes, we’d move up from…” and “This song should be getting more votes than THIS!” I twitter and blog and facebook in some attempt to get more people to the page to vote. Part of that is vanity. But part of that is knowing that Song Fu deserves a larger following than it has. This round had less than 500 voters in a week. There are YouTube videos that get more hits in an hour. Somehow, some way, Song Fu has got to “Go Viral,” “catch fire,” “become a hit,” and gather a greater following. It’s just too much fun to have such a tiny, cult following.

For me, I was worried that “Blue Sky Thinking” wasn’t doing as well in the vote as “Rain is Pouring Down.” Then, I read Wilson’s comment comparing our song to “Re: Your Brains,” and I did a little happy dance. Somebody got it! Somebody understood what we were shooting for and LIKED it! Somebody compared us to Coulton! Yahoo! Seriously, that one comment made up a LOT for not getting as many votes. Hey, Wilson! If you’re on facebook, please join our fan page! And thanks!

And thanks to FRED and the Grand Fu-bah, Unca Ken Plume for creating and hosting Masters of Song Fu!

I agree with the sentiment of your song and the style is pretty cool. I’ve actually been impressed with the musicianship and production skills of everyone across the board. Some of the best songs this round did a little more with the idea of a “song that doesn’t rhyme” than merely failing to rhyme – they played around with the structure.

In my case, I tried to write a song where the expected rhyme is *so obvious* that I don’t need to sing it or even start to sing it – the audience hears the rhyme anyway. Which was a fun challenge since normally I try *not* to use dumb, obvious, predictable rhymes. I was pretty proud of my effort but then it turned out several other people had the same idea. Jeff did the same thing as me but added more funny. Caleb did the fake-out move but as a passing moment along the way to basing his song on a word one couldn’t possibly imagine using in a song that *did* rhyme. _Song About This Song_ tried to make use of a loophole – rhyming a word with itself doesn’t count, so let’s see if we can base a whole song on that principle.

I suspect most of us who did this sort of thing were inspired by the provided Muppet song.

Zer0guy: One problem with voting here is that with 20 contestants it takes 40 minutes to listen to all the songs. Who is going to invest that much time in listening to a bunch of weird songs from people they’ve never heard of? If there were thousands of people voting it wouldn’t matter so much but as it is, most of the people who are likely to go to the trouble of voting know one or more of the contestants already. I don’t see that there’s a way around that.

It does make me scratch my head and wonder just why I gave up so many hours of sleep and time with my family to hole myself up in my too-small, too-hot office/studio in order to work on this song. I feel like, politics aside, I did put some real effort into it. I was quite pleased with the result, although there are a few technical issues I wish I had gotten enough time to correct.

Am I being down-voted for the craft of my song, such as it is, or for partisan reasons?

It’s not _my_ fault Cheney had yet another heart attack the day after I uploaded my song to Bandcamp and mailed it off to Ken Plume. Or IS it?

Perhaps I’m experiencing the result of a little “sympathy for the devil?”

Yes there are some artists I prefer over others, some I look forward to their contributions before others, but I feel obligated to give each a fair shake on their song’s merit.
I realize I’m just one listener of many, I’m generally a silent lurker, and I don’t know how many more listeners approach these rounds as I do. I just want to thank you all, whether I’ve voted for you or not, or whether I even happen to like a particular song or not, for participating.
And I hope this competition continues for many more rounds to come.

Spencer, I really liked hearing the story behind your song. Thank you for sharing.

If there were an award for it, Edric would get my vote for ‘Best Use of Assonance’. (I’ve enjoyed knowing that there was a word for what assonance describes ever since having learned it as a kid in C. S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.) I was hoping someone would do an almost-rhyming song and Edric pulled it off. I particularly liked the pairing of “Berkeley” with “working” and “bought us” with “Thesaurus”. The only thing that would have made it better was if he’d slipped the word ‘assonance’ itself in there.

For me, Caleb brought the most fu-nny this time. I liked the music hall feel of the music, the early placement of substituted words for expected rhymes, and the fact that he stopped doing that for the rest of the song and let other things be amusing instead (“If you have it, you are probably screaming in TERROR!”).

Denise’s song feels to me like it’s akin to German lieder from the Romantic era: mostly through-sung, dramatic, using the intertwining vocal lines and instrumental backdrop to convey a mood as much as (or even more than) a story. I have a feeling that I would have appreciated it a lot more if I were more – or even at all – familiar with any historical details of Bluebeard’s life.

I really appreciated “Blue Sky Thinking” by Godz Poodlz, for being, in a way, the song that Jonathan Coulton’s “Re: Your Brains” could have been. Don’t get me wrong: I love “Re: Your Brains”, but always felt that it didn’t go quite far enough with the managerial doublespeak. “Blue Sky Thinking” goes far enough, and beyond.

The real point I wanted people to take away was in the part I quoted, anyway.

There have been people in previous Fu’s who have written some really good songs, gotten some good (as in useful, not just positive) feedback, but then were unhappy because they were low in the voting. As Scalzi said, “…it will eat away at your joy. That’s no way to live.”

I’m not naive or a Pollyanna. I know that there are plenty of reasons in this crazy, mixed-up world to be unhappy. Vice Presidents who are war criminals, Managerial DoubleSpeak and irrational fear of words that are really long, just to name three. I just don’t think that the number of votes you get in an Internet song contest is one of them.

I also know that there are plenty of legitimate reasons for choosing not to continue to participate in Song Fu – time pressure, family commitments, work commitments, ad infinitum. I don’t think that a low vote count is all that compelling a reason.