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.
Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.
Nobody could have predicted the effect of John Bonham's drum introduction on 'Good Times, Bad Times,' because no matter what he'd played in before, he'd never had the chance to flex his muscles and play like John Bonham.
The great thing about the Wilburys was that none of us had to take the heat by ourselves. I was just a member of the band. Nobody felt like he was above anybody else. We had such a good time.
My greatest teacher was not a vocal coach, not the work of other singers, but the way Tommy Dorsey breathed and phrased on the trombone.
Our songs did not transcend being R&B hits. They were R&B hits that white kids were attracted to. And if people bought it, it became rock & roll. That's marketing. Why couldn't it still be R&B? The bass pattern didn't change. The song didn't change. It was still 'Yakety Yak' and 'Searchin'.'
Pop music often tells you everything is OK, while rock music tells you that it's not OK, but you can change it.
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