Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.
Quincy JonesRead
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?
Interpretation
Pursuing music requires patience and teamwork, even if initial efforts sound imperfect.
Quincy Jones highlights the journey of making music, emphasizing that beginnings may be rough, but with dedication and collaboration, even those who are only partially skilled can come together to create something great. It underscores the importance of persistence, teamwork, and improvement over time in the creative process.
In practice
During a music workshop to encourage creativity among beginners.
Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.
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.
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.'
'Society's Child' was a real hard record to start with. That's all you want is for you to put your first record out and have people screaming at you in the streets. But it taught me right away that what I was doing was valuable and important.
Pop stardom is not very compelling. I'm much more interested in a relationship between performer and audience that is of equals. I came up through folk music, and there's no pomp and circumstance to the performance. There's no, like, 'I'll be the rock star, you be the adulating fan.'
That happens every time I get behind a guitar, regardless of what I'm saying, 'cause music is freedom and being free is the closest I've ever felt to being spiritual.
The Telecaster has two sounds - a good one and a bad one.
Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play.
The curious beauty of African music is that it uplifts even as it tells a sad tale. You may be poor, you may have only a ramshackle house, you may have lost your job, but that song gives you hope.
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