Lecture Notes for 4/17/97:
Guest Lecture by Aimee Mann:
So if Aimee's so good, why isn't she more successful? Aimee says
part of it is because a large component of success has
little to do with the music, and much more to do with the politics
of promoting a record. She just isn't into "schmooze."
Songwriting: Aimee likes to write lyrics first and she tries to
capture a mood with the chords and melodies to accompany
the lyrics. She definitely does NOT "plan to write a song," and
doesn't just sit down
and say "I'm going to write a song now." Instead, she writes songs
when the mood
strikes. Aimee likes writing lyrics that rhyme - and she's not at
all apologetic about
this - because she likes the puzzle nature of trying to get a rhyme
to work.
Jon Brion is an amazing genius, the likes of which we are not
likely to see again
anytime soon. But he is not always practical in terms of time,
budgets, and things
like that.
Aimee disagrees with Michael Brook and thinks that you definitely
CAN learn to
write pop songs by studying music in school. Just learning diatonic
harmony was a
big step for her, in terms of knowing how chords typically go
together.
Aimee played us a new song that she is just now working on, about
her friendship
with an unmentioned famous songwriter who thought she wasn't
worshipping him
enough (or so she thinks).
Lonny pointed out that two of her songs have an unusual metric
structure: "Put Me On Top" has some 6 and 7 bar
phrases; Fourth of July has some 7 bar phrases. This was news to
Aimee, who always wondered why her bandmates
sometimes had trouble following along.
Aimee's manager Michael Housman was here too. (He is the "Boo" in
the lyric "And it was Boo who made the joke).
They talked about some of the A&R people at various labels, and
about the process of getting a record the proper
exposure.