Quote

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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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
Determine
Notes
Wrong
Next
Play
Good
Determines
Note

More quotes by Miles Davis

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Some of [drummers] drop time because they want to hear what you're doin'.
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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.
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Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.
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Food makes my mind sluggish.
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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.
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Tom Jones is funny to me, man. I mean, he really tries to ape Ray Charles and Sammy Davis, you know. He's nice-looking he looks good doing it. I mean, if I was him, I'd do the same thing. If I was only thinking about making money.
Miles Davis
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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.
Miles Davis
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I can't write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like [John] Coltrane play something I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don't never write for myself.
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.
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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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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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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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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I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it - like, they say rock. Because the white singers can't sound like James Brown, they call him soul. They've been doing that for years. That's the prejudice crap.
Miles Davis
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You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.
Miles Davis
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If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!
Miles Davis
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Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player.
Miles Davis
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All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.
Miles Davis
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I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.
Miles Davis
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You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.
Miles Davis