Quote

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

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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
Half
Funky
Write
Section
Writing
Drummer
Even
Sections
Something
Rhythm
Things
Beat
Like
Beats
Usually
Shuffle

More quotes by Miles Davis

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Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education.
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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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If you don't know what to play, play nothing.
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You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.
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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.
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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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Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery
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People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype.
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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.
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I never thought that the music called jazz was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.
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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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John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive
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If you have to ask, you'll never know.
Miles Davis
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There are no wrong notes.
Miles Davis
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To keep creating you have to be about change.
Miles Davis
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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.
Miles Davis
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Maybe you play a melody twice. You play it once like you like it, and some parts that you don't like you can just switch. An eight-bar motive - you can just take it and put it in the front or back or something like that. It can save you 50 or 60 or 70,000 dollars, a drum machine. That's why everybody uses it.
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Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!
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I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.
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[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.
Miles Davis