A great song can make a terrible singer sound good, but a good singer - you put a great song on top of that, you're really in great shape!
Interpretation
Great songs can enhance the performance of a singer, but talented singers truly shine with great material.
This quote by Quincy Jones emphasizes the importance of both the quality of the song and the skill of the singer in creating a great musical performance. While a great song can uplift even a mediocre singer's performance, it is the combination of a talented vocalist with an exceptional song that leads to truly remarkable music. This highlights the collaborative nature of artistry in the music industry.
In practice
This quote could be shared in a music production seminar to highlight the importance of songwriting.
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.
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.
Average band with a great drummer sounds great, great band with an average drummer sounds average.
I sing to the realists; people who accept it like it is.
It's always beautiful to sing with other great voices. I like voices in general. It's a big privilege to have great singers next to me.
Anybody with money can put on a KISS show, but they can't be KISS.
I spent one year being very poor at home with my piano, and nobody was calling me, but I had space to think about things on my own and find out exactly what I wanted to do.
If you want to play something that you hear, you need to listen with your mind's eye. You've heard of the mind's eye, right? Your mind has an ear too. It's a kind of listening, but it's not using your ears to listen. It's listening with your inner ear, and that's what you want to translate onto the guitar.
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