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Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.

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
Pretty
Find
Notes
Jazz
Playing
Worry

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When the band plays fast, you play slow when the band plays slow, you play fast.
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Lionel [Richie] said, Yeah, I learned chords and stuff playin' against your albums.
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People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype.
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A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.
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Always listen for what you can leave out.
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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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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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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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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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Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.
Miles Davis
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Food makes my mind sluggish.
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.
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I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused.
Miles Davis
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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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Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!
Miles Davis
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In respect for drummers, see, I love drummers.
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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In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
Miles Davis
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Dave [Holland] plays the way he wants to play. And it's usually what's needed. You know, Dave is such a deep thinker. You can't tell him too much, else it might spoil his spirit, you know.
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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