A Quote by Marcus Miller

It's so important to me to make the music right that I didn't have time to be intimidated. — © Marcus Miller
It's so important to me to make the music right that I didn't have time to be intimidated.
Those albums are so important to me because, for the first time, I was making my own music, paying for it, finding strengths in it, and going through the process of finding the right music for the record.
I think it's important to find somebody who you trust, who has the same vision. If I were to do that myself, and not trust anybody to do it for me or with me, I would have to spend as much time as I have learning to make music on making music videos.
Just listening carefully to what the musicians are really doing, putting the music in the right time... I became aware of the degree to which time, and therefore duration, was important in music and in art. It had a direct influence on my painting.
Miles Davis came in a couple of days and said, "Oh, man, I love that. Keep going." So he said, "Let me know when you need trumpet." And he came in, and he was sitting there, and I was very intimidated, because now he's going to play the trumpet on something that I wrote." He starts to play, and I go, "That's not right, but I don't know how to tell him it's not right." Finally he goes, "When are you going to tell me what to do?" He said, "This is your music. I know you know how it's supposed to sound. Stop fooling around. We don't have time."
I think people are intimidated by me, and I don't know why. Sometimes even my own bandmates can be intimidated, or irritated, by me.
The big thing is, everybody says it's being in the right place at the right time. But it's more than that, it's being in the right place all the time. Because if I make 20 runs to the near post and each time I lose my defender, and 19 times the ball goes over my head or behind me - then one time I'm three yards out, the ball comes to the right place and I tap it in - then people say, right place, right time. And I was there *all* the time.
I believe that the greatest music is storytelling anyway, in a heightened medium. So I write a lot of music, and I play a lot with my guitar, I still sing a lot, but now I'm more personal about it than public, in a way. I think there will be a time where I'd like to bring the singing back into some of my performances. It all depends if the material's right, if the story's right, if it's my kind of taste in music, as well. It means so much to me. We all know how affective music can be, I just want to make sure when I do it, I'm doing it because I actually feel it and I care about it.
I don't like the sound of my own voice. And, for people I don't know, their impression of me is what they read on the internet, and they're so far off a lot of the time. I think people are intimidated by me, and I don't know why. Sometimes even my own bandmates can be intimidated, or irritated, by me. I come across as arrogant somehow. In reality, I've probably got the lowest self-esteem of anybody I know, which has really been rubbed in my face lately in personal situations.
I could read music and sing all the right notes at the right time. And over time, I literally found my voice, found a way to make sound.
I'm tryna put out the right stuff and just do me and not pay attention to who's hating and who's loving me and make the music I love to make, and make it the best I can.
Anybody that's intimidated by my success probably isn't the right person for me.
I work at a record label where I have archives. These things [memorabilia] occurred and are important to somebody, and they're important to me. I find the record industry largely repellent. This music, the Teen Idles, all of that stuff, is important to me. I don't have lawyers, an agent or a manager. However I find the music industry largely repellent. I just make records because that's what I love to do. So I think that era, those pieces of media, I keep in my collection.
Are you intimidated by me? Because if you're intimidated by me, that's something you'll have to deal with.
I do select a soundtrack for each of my subjects and again my assistants you know they make fun of me because that is more important to me than the lighting, which I just do in a minute right before, but I spend a long time on the soundtracks.
There's the way modern music is produced, which is, 'Here's a piece of music, and I'm the producer, so pay me and make sure my credit is right and get me my splits.' But I'm trying to go backward. Now, it's more like 'What's the texture? What's the over-arching story?' There are more things to pay attention to than 'Is this the right snare?'
For me, no matter how much money you want to make off of singing, no matter what kind of fame you want to make, achieve, the most important thing to me is making music that you're proud of, making music that comes from you, comes from an authentic place in you.
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