Quote

If you have a tone like mine that is recognizable. No matter what I play, when you hear my tone you can tell it's 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
Tone
Mines
Mine
Hear
Tell
Matter
Play
Like
Recognizable

More quotes by 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
Japanese people they hear my warmin' up and they start screamin'. They can tell it's me.It's my tone on the trumpet, it sounds like I'm speakin'.
Miles Davis
Image
If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.
Miles Davis
Image
The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones.
Miles Davis
Image
John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
Trane was the perfect saxophonist for Monk's music because of the space that Monk always used. Trane could fill up all that space with all them chords and sounds he was playing then.
Miles Davis
Image
Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.
Miles Davis
Image
Catch Harry Belafonte. He's got a helluva rhythm section.And so have the Pointer Sisters. And that little guy with Sammy Clayton. He plays the whole show with 40 members.
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!
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 can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played
Miles Davis
Image
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
Image
When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.
Miles Davis
Image
In respect for drummers, see, I love drummers.
Miles Davis
Image
He sounded to me like he's supposed to be the savior of jazz. Sometimes people speak as though someone asked them a question. Well, no one asked him a question.
Miles Davis
Image
A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.
Miles Davis
Image
Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player.
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