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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.
Miles Davis
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Miles Davis
Age: 65 †
Born: 1926
Born: May 26
Died: 1991
Died: September 28
Actor
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Jazz Musician
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Alton
Illinois
Miles Dewey Davis III
Miles Dewey Davis
III Davis
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More quotes by Miles Davis
Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.
Miles Davis
That's the way you judge a car, man, [good or bad], when you start it up. It's just the same thing. I mean, I drive a Ferrari - not to be cute, but because I dig it. I'd rather drive a ten-year-old Ferrari than one of them new things-they don't go.
Miles Davis
You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.
Miles Davis
To keep creating you have to be about change.
Miles Davis
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
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.
Miles Davis
If you had to call it unison, it ain't unison. It ain't the same as somebody else. If you can hear that it's unison, and you have to name it something other than unison, it ain't unison, you know what I mean? It's two guys playin', but one guy is playin' slightly out of tune, one is playin' slightly off meter.
Miles Davis
If you don't know what to play, play nothing.
Miles Davis
Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.
Miles Davis
[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.
Miles Davis
If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.
Miles Davis
Drummers - sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.
Miles Davis
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.
Miles Davis
In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
Miles Davis
You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.
Miles Davis
In music, silence is more important than sound.
Miles Davis
You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.
Miles Davis
There are no wrong notes.
Miles Davis
All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.
Miles Davis
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.
Miles Davis
