Photo of me and the little dude by Tina Smith-Pautler

Woke up this morning to find out what the next songwriting challenge on my plate is. The object of Masters of Song Fu #4 Round 2 is:

Write a march.

A march is “a piece of music with a strong regular rhythm which in origin was expressly written for marching to” – and that is your challenge. You can write on any topic. Your song must run no shorter than 1 minute 15 seconds.

And I was just saying the other day that it’s high time I dusted off the old Sousaphone.

Anyway, I sat right down and started working it out. Given the necessities of tempo, this won’t be as peppy as my tune for Round 1, which was more of a light jog, but I think I’ve got something half decent coming together. I’m pretty much done, with a little wiggle room for tweaking, which is really good because I think this is going to take a bit of time in the studio to get right.

And speaking of Round 1

Although I didn’t fare too well vote-wise in the first round (I finished 104 votes of the lead), I got some great feedback on “I Will Always Look up to You,” my tune written from the point of view of a rug.

These kind words are from the comments on the Song Fu page:

1. Very good song, great beat, love the uuuh backing vocals, good lyrics, too.
2. Reminds me of Blitzen Trapper and that is a very good thing in my mind. I would have never guessed that “I’ve Came from Afghanistan Just to Tie Your Room Together” would stick in my mind. But it does.
3. The vaguely CSN&Y vocals are really awesome on this one. The handclaps are a nice touch (never can make them work in my own songs.. :() And the chorus is right up there with Lex and da Poodlz for stuck-in-my-head-edness. Finally, any song that manages a Big Lebowski reference and mentions Afghanistan so cheerfully is good in my book.
4. Starts promising, and then DELIVERS with genius. Dude, you’re good.

Kind words indeed, and I’m looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say in Round 2. But not as much as I’m looking forward to hearing all the music (even if they’re all marches).