Notebook : pages 5-6

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pages 5-6

Right side: When You Get a Girl, which ended up on the record pretty close to what went down on paper from the start. Musically, I wanted it to be just about as simple as possible: one five note turn repeated again and again for the whole song, over two chords that alternate in equal time, with a slow, deliberate build. The beat like a metronome, bam, bam, bam, bam. Simple, unrelenting.

The only place the melody even varies is that second line in the second stanza: "mo—vies", the em-dash my way of noting the playful extension of the phrasing.

The song is a sort of paraphrase of the collected wisdom of the 12-year-old to the 10-year-old. Blacktop education and grade school misconceptions of what that whole girlfriend thing is about, told in mistaken and mysterious vocabulary.

More of Internet on the left; I made a short list of websites to shout during the long chorus/outro portion (I had hoped to record a crowd shouting these—that didn't happen). Also, some chord and melody notes in the bottom right that I ended up completely disregarding.

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