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You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.

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
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More quotes by 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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[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.
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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When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads
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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We're not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got 'em, so they can keep 'em.
Miles Davis
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If you have to ask, you'll never know.
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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I'm not messing around with nobody's woman. If I want a woman I go get her - you know what I mean?
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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Always listen for what you can leave out.
Miles Davis
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I put all those synthesizer sounds behind Decoy and Code M.D. A lot of things we write together. A lot of things are his, but they don't have that thing I want on the bottom. I often tell him, I say, Bobby [Irving], if there's a melody, there's another one somewhere that goes with it.
Miles Davis
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Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.
Miles Davis
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Always look ahead, but never look back.
Miles Davis
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To keep creating you have to be about change.
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
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Lionel [Richie] said, Yeah, I learned chords and stuff playin' against your albums.
Miles Davis
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Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.
Miles Davis
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In music, silence is more important than sound.
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