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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.

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
Liked
Playing
Started
Heard
Trumpet
Everybody
Trumpets
Father
Studied
Things
Picked
Bought

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Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.
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Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player.
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Some musicians play with their heart, you know what I mean? I don't know what to tell a person that can't - if you can't tell a person what you're talkin' about when they're rushin' or droppin' the tempo, you get somebody else.
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Drummers - sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.
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If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!
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Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.
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You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played
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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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It's like swimmin' without warmin' up, yuo know what I mean? So [cackles] we use the drum machine, and we take it out.
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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.
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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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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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When the band plays fast, you play slow when the band plays slow, you play fast.
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I gave the album [You're Under Arrest] to Quincy Jones and he loved D Train. We couldn't call it D Train it's called MDI/Something's On Your Mind/MD2. That's on the album.
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In music, silence is more important than sound.
Miles Davis
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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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If you have to ask, you'll never know.
Miles Davis
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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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If you got up on the bandstand at Minton's and couldn't play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked.
Miles Davis
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You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.
Miles Davis