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

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They [police] do me like that all the time! What you work for?.
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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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When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads
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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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Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.
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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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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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When we edit the music, I always remember, It's my band. Save me a place to play.
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Food makes my mind sluggish.
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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.
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You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played
Miles Davis
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People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype.
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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
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Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!
Miles Davis
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What's swinging in words? If a guy makes you pat your foot and if you feel it down your back, you don't have to ask anybody if that's good music or not. You can always feel it.
Miles Davis
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My father's rich, my momma's good looking. Right? And I can play the Blues. I've never suffered and don't intend to suffer.
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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.
Miles Davis
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If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.
Miles Davis
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All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.
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I would never try and play like Harry James, because I don't like his tone - for me. It's just white. You know what I mean? He has what we black trumpet players call a white sound. But it's for white music ... I can tell a white trumpet player, just listening to a record. There'll be something he'll do that'll let me know that he's white.
Miles Davis