Quote

I can tell. I'm gifted with that, you know. When I hear that the tempo is slightly off, it's hard for me.

Miles Davis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Hard
Tempo
Gifted
Slightly
Hear
Tell

More quotes by Miles Davis

Image
I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it - like, they say rock. Because the white singers can't sound like James Brown, they call him soul. They've been doing that for years. That's the prejudice crap.
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
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.
Miles Davis
Image
My ego only needs a good rhythm section
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
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.
Miles Davis
Image
You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
Keith, how does it feel to be a genius?
Miles Davis
Image
I keep telling Ron Lorman and them in the control room, It's my band! The reason I have a band is because I can't stand for somebody to tell me what to do.
Miles Davis
Image
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.
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There are no wrong notes.
Miles Davis
Image
When we edit the music, I always remember, It's my band. Save me a place to play.
Miles Davis
Image
As long as I've been playing, they never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it.
Miles Davis
Image
I've gotten hernias from drummers when they drop tempo.
Miles Davis
Image
I don't wanna talk about Teo [Macero]. He's a helluva musician, a brilliant musician, but he's just not for me, that's all. I can elaborate on it, but I don't want to do that.
Miles Davis