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.
When one knows at an early age that their gift, talent and direction is musical, one tends to focus on that and let nothing interfere or impede the forward motion toward the end of that rainbow. And after 50-something years of rockin' out, you still realise there is no end to that distant rainbow until one's last sunset.
I always said if a man would have done half the records that I've done, we would know about it. But we don't know all the records I've done for other artists.
Theres no way in the world I can feel the same blues the way I used to. When I play in Chicago, Im playing up-to-date, not the blues I was born with. People should hear the pure blues - the blues we used to have when we had no money.
Listen kid, take my advice, never hate a song that has sold half a million copies.
Hurry, get on board, it's comin', listen to those rails a-thrumming all aboard. Get on the "A" train, soon you will be on Sugar Hill in Harlem.
Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play.
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