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You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played

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
Anything
Music
Play
Horn
Armstrong
Louis
Horns
Hasn
Played

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To keep creating you have to be about change.
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Lionel [Richie] said, Yeah, I learned chords and stuff playin' against your albums.
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My ego only needs a good rhythm section
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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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In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
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Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.
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A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.
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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.
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Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!
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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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I've gotten hernias from drummers when they drop tempo.
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In respect for drummers, see, I love drummers.
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If I hear a song like Time After Time. I'm sittin' there lookin' at video and Cindy Lauper comes on singin' this song. I said, God damnnnnn!
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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.
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The only way a drum machine will get out of beat is for you not to pay your electric bill.
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Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.
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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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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.
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The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones.
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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.
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