When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.
Interpretation
Producing an album involves careful planning and structure, enhancing the listener's experience.
In this quote, Quincy Jones emphasizes the importance of treating album production as a theatrical experience. An album should be constructed with intentionality and artistry, ensuring that each element resonates with the listener, as the human ear naturally appreciates well-structured arrangements.
In practice
In a presentation on music production, I might quote Quincy Jones to highlight the importance of structure.
Just blow in it and sound bad for about a year and then make it sound a little bit better, and you get a little band together, and then you get a few jobs. You take four guys that sound half bad, but if they're 25 percent each, they can give 100 percent, you know?
Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.
You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.
I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.
I tell my kids and I tell proteges, always have humility when you create and grace when you succeed, because it's not about you. You are a terminal for a higher power. As soon as you accept that, you can do it forever.
I think the attraction of 'American Idol' is about the basic human nature attitude that is, 'We can put you up there. But we can take you down.'
The two most important tools an architect has are the eraser in the drawing room and the sledge hammer on the construction site.
As a musician I'm kind of nomadic, Waldo-like. I show up in different places, and I'm witness to unbelievable things.
In my writing, I want to be laid bare as a human being.
I've always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks - you learn craft, you learn structure, all that - as you go.
A writer is a palmist, reading the lines of the planet.
The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail - not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime.
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