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When the band plays fast, you play slow when the band plays slow, you play fast.

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
Guitar
Band
Play
Plays
Slow
Fast

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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.
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There are no wrong notes.
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Lionel [Richie] said, Yeah, I learned chords and stuff playin' against your albums.
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Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.
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All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.
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My ego only needs a good rhythm section
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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.
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Always look ahead, but never look back.
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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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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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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.
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I can hear what I want [people] to play. If you don't hear what you want someone to play, then you can't tell 'em.
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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.
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Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery
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You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.
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You ever hear Buddy Miles play the drums? You know, he doesn't vary the tempo at all.
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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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Music is the framework around the silence.
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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.
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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.
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