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You ever hear Buddy Miles play the drums? You know, he doesn't vary the tempo at all.

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
Miles
Hear
Doesn
Ever
Play
Tempo
Drums
Vary
Buddy

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I've gotten hernias from drummers when they drop tempo.
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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.
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You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.
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Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.
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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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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.
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If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!
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In music, silence is more important than sound.
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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.
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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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To keep creating you have to be about change.
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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.
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[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.
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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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Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.
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Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging — but they weren't sweet.
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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.
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The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.
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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.
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Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
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