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Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.

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
Funny
Music
Come
Thing
Really
Think
Thinking

More quotes by Miles Davis

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What's swinging in words? If a guy makes you pat your foot and if you feel it down your back, you don't have to ask anybody if that's good music or not. You can always feel it.
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.
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People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype.
Miles Davis
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I couldn't do What's Love Got To Do With It, Tina Turner because it wasn't the right tempo so I scratched it from the record. I wanted to do it about a year ago, but something happened.
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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When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.
Miles Davis
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A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.
Miles Davis
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All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.
Miles Davis
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I usually write from the rhythm section...If a drummer got a funky beat on some things - like a half-shuffle or a shuffle or a backbeat that's even - I can write something.
Miles Davis
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In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.
Miles Davis
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You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.
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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Some of [drummers] drop time because they want to hear what you're doin'.
Miles Davis
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The reason [drummers] call things unison, and they sound unison, is because you actually play two different tempos . . . like you're a little sharp, or a little flat it's so slight that they call it unison, but it's not unison.
Miles Davis
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Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery
Miles Davis
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I never thought that the music called jazz was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.
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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If you have a tone like mine that is recognizable. No matter what I play, when you hear my tone you can tell it's me.
Miles Davis
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If you got up on the bandstand at Minton's and couldn't play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked.
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