QUINCY JONES ON CREATIVE PROCESS

From his book 12 Notes On Life and Creativity

Excerpt pages 94-95

As I learned from my two mentors, Victor Young and Alfred Newman, it's important to "just write and turn the page. Never look back." This proved to be an important aspect of creating  in the alpha state, because it's important not to block what your subconscious mind is trying to tell you. Sometimes it's difficult to get started, but you've got to stop overthinking and just begin, even if it's just a single word or shape. Before I pursued music, I explored various art forms such as drawing and painting, and I would always start with a charcoal sketch.  Even if I didn't know what I wanted the end product to look like, I just put down a basic structure or contour.  Then from there, I'd add watercolors and finally oil. When I started producing music, I used a similar process.  That is, I tried not to get locked in right away with an expectation of a final product.  Instead, I followed my instincts and translated them into a basic shape or sound.  The, I built on top of it by defining dynamics, colors, density, and so on.  Start with an image or melody, and let it out.  And as the sketch or song takes shape, you can lay on the watercolors.

Creativity is informed by what you feel, not what you think, and learning to tune into those feelings is what is ultimately going to carry you through when distractions come. I've 100 percent relied on my instincts throughout my career; without doing so, I know I wouldn't have been able to create art that has stood the test of time,  I recognize that it's easier said than done, but the next method I'm going to share with you is without a doubt the best way to do it.

And that method is "the Goosebump Test."

If the music I'm creating gives me goosebumps, odds are it'll do the same for at least one other person on this planet. But if it doesn't move me at all, and I'm trying to do it for the sake of getting a reaction out of someone else, I'll get stuck in a never-ending cycle of mediocrity.  It doesn't work....."

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF QUINCY JONES (By Quincy and a Lot of Other People!)

The Autobiography of Quincy Jones C 2001 Quincy Jones (What about all those other people?) Doubleday 

What ABOUT those other people who wrote this "autobiography?" Well, they include Quincy's brother, his ex wife Peggy Lipton (who has more recently written her own memoir), and his best friend, each who have a chapter that moves the story along. But doesn't the term "autobiography" (as opposed to biography) mean written by the subject himself? The use of other narrators on this book is effective and the chapters Quincy wrote himself are quite creatively and humorously written too (or did he have a ghost writer?) so I tend to think that the idea here was to take the same story and introduce a variety of viewpoints, most of which are harmonious with Quincy's POV about his life; no one has anything too bad to say about the man though (moral judgement call!) he is a self confessed DOG, yes he is... To focus on my favorite part, the chapter Quincy we suppose wrote called "My Life As A Dog," I particularly enjoyed his telling of the story of how he became enamored with an mysterious woman who he almost never met, but who had his (phone) number as well as the numbers of a good number of other famous musician type dogs, and managed to seduce his imagination... Page 160 - 161- 162 - 163 "My most vulnerable point as a dog- and one of the most bizarre in retrospect -involved an incident that would take place in the wake of a numbing marital breakup. (Note the downsizing of the event with that word "incident" CT). On September 6, 1986 I got a call at the Bel Air Hotel from a woman who called herself Ariana... Later it came out in Vanity Fair magazine in an article called "The Obsession with Miranda" that Ariana had gotten through the phone defenses of no fewer than thirty-seven guys....I'll always be grateful for her making me risk love again after my nervous breakdown, even if it was only "phone jones" in the beginning. At the time I met her (he barely did! CT) I was totally shut down emotionally....She played all of us like a Stradivarius - a pound of world-weary dogs who'd heard and seen it all.... After eluding my bodyguards and ignoring the advice of my best friend, I took a limo downtown with champagne and a hamper of smoked salmon sandwiches in a box, all excited. It had been seven months now, and I was finally starting to be able to feel love again....