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When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads

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
Learned
Heard
Play
Hawkins
Coleman
Ballads

More quotes by Miles Davis

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I keep telling Ron Lorman and them in the control room, It's my band! The reason I have a band is because I can't stand for somebody to tell me what to do.
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Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
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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.
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Lionel [Richie] said, Yeah, I learned chords and stuff playin' against your albums.
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When the band plays fast, you play slow when the band plays slow, you play fast.
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In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
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You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.
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Some of [drummers] drop time because they want to hear what you're doin'.
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Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.
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I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.
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Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.
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Drummers - sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.
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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.
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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.
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The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.
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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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In music, silence is more important than sound.
Miles Davis
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Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.
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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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Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.
Miles Davis