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You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.

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
Musician
Comfortable
Music
Never
Men
Fouled
Musicians
Jazz

More quotes by Miles Davis

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It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?
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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.
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When the band plays fast, you play slow when the band plays slow, you play fast.
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I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there. . . . I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play everyday.
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Food makes my mind sluggish.
Miles Davis
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That's the way you judge a car, man, [good or bad], when you start it up. It's just the same thing. I mean, I drive a Ferrari - not to be cute, but because I dig it. I'd rather drive a ten-year-old Ferrari than one of them new things-they don't go.
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.
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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.
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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.
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Sometimes, if you ask people to go downstairs and get me this or that, they'll say, It's rainin or It might rain, or There's some bumpy roads on the road, or bla-bla-bla. They give you all those excuses, so when they do something which is easy, you're supposed to say, Damn, you did that?
Miles Davis
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Drummers - sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.
Miles Davis
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When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you . . . their spirits are walking around in me, so they're still here and passing it on to others.
Miles Davis
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Always listen for what you can leave out.
Miles Davis
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I can hear what I want [people] to play. If you don't hear what you want someone to play, then you can't tell 'em.
Miles Davis
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In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
Miles Davis
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If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.
Miles Davis
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[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.
Miles Davis
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You can tell whether a person plays well or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not.
Miles Davis
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You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.
Miles Davis
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The only way a drum machine will get out of beat is for you not to pay your electric bill.
Miles Davis