If you started in New York you were dealing with the biggest guys in the world. You're dealing with Charlie Parker and all the big bands and everything. We got more experience working in Seattle.
Interpretation
Experience in a smaller scene can be more valuable than competing in a bigger one.
Quincy Jones highlights the importance of local experience and growth, suggesting that working in a smaller, less competitive environment like Seattle provided valuable lessons that are often overshadowed by the grandeur of major cities like New York, where the pressure and competition from influential figures can be overwhelming.
In practice
In a music workshop discussing career paths, one might say, 'As Quincy Jones pointed out, experience in Seattle can be just as valuable as competing in New York.'
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.
The enticing allure of Nashville is that there is always something new coming down the pike. Put this record on and you’ll hear footsteps.
Pop music often tells you everything is OK, while rock music tells you that it's not OK, but you can change it.
Some kids went to the movies for escape. We found it with jazz. This is where we got religion. It was a kind of raw spiritual anarchy.
Like family, we are tied to each other. This is what all good musicians understand.
I wanted to play blues. But I wasn't blue enough. I wasn't like Muddy Waters, people who really had it hard. In our house, we had food on the table. We were doing well compared to many. So I concentrated on this fun and frolic, these novelties.
I've seen myself on those lists of the 100 best guitarists, and if they think that I'm that good, thank them. Thank God for them. But I don't think so.
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