my old man always says that you can polish a turd but you’ve gotta varnish it first
Alder has got it right, though another example might be taking a track with a turd beat and crap melody and adding all sorts of effects (in addition to mastering) to try to make it polished. It’s still musically wack even though it sounds professional or highly produced.
like tabasco said, the main idea is taking something fundamentally bad and adding bells and whistles try to make it better.
to dimensionX, your creative process doesn’t really fit the analogy. What you are doing is creating art from the unusual or the discarded like a Robert Rauschenberg who made art from trash.
in your case, the turds in the analogy wouldn’t refer to the specific elements you are using but could refer to what you create out of them.
I think it’s more like “don’t polish the turd, unless you enjoy the process and the outcome of doing it”.
true, who wouldnt enjoy that 
This is basically the definition of fm synthesis as well lol
!!!