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If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

Miles Davis

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Miles Davis
Age: 65 †
Born: 1926
Born: May 26
Died: 1991
Died: September 28
Actor
Autobiographer
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Film Score Composer
Jazz Musician
Musician
Recording Artist
Songwriter
Television Actor
Alton
Illinois
Miles Dewey Davis III
Miles Dewey Davis
III Davis
Jazz
Understood
Music
Everything

More quotes by Miles Davis

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You want to know how I started playing trumpet? My father bought me one, and I studied the trumpet. And everybody I heard that I liked, I picked up things from.
Miles Davis
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In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
Miles Davis
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Sometimes [playing free] doesn't happen, because maybe a guy's wife'll come in, you know, and his ego will catch him. If everybody's completely just straight-without any old ladies over here, a fourth of whisky over there if it's balanced right, it'll come off. It has to be. But when you get egos involved with playing free, you can't do it.
Miles Davis
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[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.
Miles Davis
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Somebody, my daughter or my wife, gave me a music box for Christmas. It plays My Funny Valentine on celeste, you know? So I had Bobby [Irving] just play Jean Pierre with the changes on celeste.
Miles Davis
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It's like swimmin' without warmin' up, yuo know what I mean? So [cackles] we use the drum machine, and we take it out.
Miles Davis
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Catch Harry Belafonte. He's got a helluva rhythm section.And so have the Pointer Sisters. And that little guy with Sammy Clayton. He plays the whole show with 40 members.
Miles Davis
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I've gotten hernias from drummers when they drop tempo.
Miles Davis
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Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
Miles Davis
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Always listen for what you can leave out.
Miles Davis
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I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way.
Miles Davis
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When the band plays fast, you play slow when the band plays slow, you play fast.
Miles Davis
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My father's rich, my momma's good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I've never suffered and don't intend to suffer.
Miles Davis
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The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones.
Miles Davis
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There are no wrong notes.
Miles Davis
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You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played
Miles Davis
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You ever hear Buddy Miles play the drums? You know, he doesn't vary the tempo at all.
Miles Davis
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Maybe you play a melody twice. You play it once like you like it, and some parts that you don't like you can just switch. An eight-bar motive - you can just take it and put it in the front or back or something like that. It can save you 50 or 60 or 70,000 dollars, a drum machine. That's why everybody uses it.
Miles Davis
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Trane was the perfect saxophonist for Monk's music because of the space that Monk always used. Trane could fill up all that space with all them chords and sounds he was playing then.
Miles Davis
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John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive
Miles Davis