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You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.

Quincy Jones

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Quincy Jones
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: March 14
Actor
Autobiographer
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Film Producer
Humanitarian
Instrumentalist
Jazz Musician
Jazz Trumpeter
Music Arranger
Chicago
Illinois
Q
Quincy
Quincy Delight Jones Jr.
Quincy Delight Jones Jr
Quincy Jones Jr.
Come
Melody
Straight
Harmony
Theory
Study
Else
Music
Orchestration
Everything
Melodies

More quotes by Quincy Jones

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The act of multitrack recording is the act of arranging.
Quincy Jones
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I used to practice piano for hours, and now, with a synthesizer, you can input the music and the machine perfects the song. That's why we have so many people in the music business who should be plumbers. They don't really understand music because they haven't been trained.
Quincy Jones
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A song should have all the color and beauty of every rose.
Quincy Jones
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I was married for 36 years but now I'm free.
Quincy Jones
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Some summers my father would take us down to visit our grandmother in Louisville, who was an ex-slave, Susan Jones, and she had a shotgun shack they call it, and no electricity, a well in the back, a coal stove, kerosene lamps.
Quincy Jones
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To me it's no accident that all the symphony orchestras around the world tune up to the note A. And A is 440 cycles, except in Germany where it's 444. But the universe is 450 cycles. So what I'm trying to say is, I think it's God's voice, melody especially. Counterpoint, retrograde inversion, harmony... that's the science and the craft.
Quincy Jones
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I'm just a musician and a record producer.
Quincy Jones
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There's power in the collective. If you don't believe me, just watch a symphony orchestra with a conductor and 120 people who are thinking about exactly the same thing at the same moment - no babies, no stock markets, no mortgages. Just 32nd notes.
Quincy Jones
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Communications are making this one world. Back in the day, 400-500 years ago, nobody knew what anyone else was doing. It's on the 6 O'Clock news now. Now we can say, Oh, that's the way they live. Oh, they do that!! Opportunities, the chance to bring about change, it's all based on communication. Communication and jet planes.
Quincy Jones
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Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing.
Quincy Jones
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It's easy to get next to music theory, especially between your peers and music classes and so forth. You just pay attention. I had a good ear, so I realized that printed music was just about reminding you what to play.
Quincy Jones
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Count Basie practically adopted me at 13. We became closer and closer and I ended up conducting for him and Sinatra.
Quincy Jones
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After every war, there was a significant change in the music, and I can understand how that happened. If you participate in protecting the country, you think you can be part of it, but you come back home and it's worse than ever.
Quincy Jones
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You cannot get an A if you're afraid of getting an F.
Quincy Jones
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The process is the most beautiful part.
Quincy Jones
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My dream is to put together a performance of the evolution of black music with Cirque du Soleil . I would also like to do street opera and children's books. But even as I work toward these things, I want to simplify my life.
Quincy Jones
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I don't remember feeling love.
Quincy Jones
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My brother died of cancer two years ago (1998), renal cell carcinoma. He was my only real brother and I didn't know what to do. I'd never been so desperate in my life.
Quincy Jones
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Im probably the only one in the world you can name thats worked with Billie Holiday, Louie Armstrong, Ella, Duke, Miles, Dizzy, Ray Charles, Aretha, Michael Jackson, rappers. Fly Me to the Moon was played on the moon by Buzz Aldrin. Sinatra. Paul Simon. Tony Bennett. Im the only one.
Quincy Jones
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Every day, my daddy told me the same thing. 'Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it's done. Be the labour great or small, do it well or not at all.'
Quincy Jones