Miles Davis Quotes

Sometimes, if you ask people to "go downstairs and get me this or that," they'll say, "It's rainin" or "It might rain," or "There's some bumpy roads on the road," or bla-bla-bla. They give you all those excuses, so when they do something which is easy, you're supposed to say, "Damn, you did that?"

First you imitate, then you innovate.

You can't compete with Sweets' sound and time feel. It's impossible.

I've used [drum machine] because I have to have the perfect tempo.

There are no wrong notes.

The only way a drum machine will get out of beat is for you not to pay your electric bill.

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.

Jazz musicians are so comfortable. The reason they can't do what we do is because they're so comfortable doin' what they do.

I'll play it first and figure out what it's called later.

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.

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.

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.

With "We Are The World," I can't even eat when I watch that on television. If I'm eatin' some food, I have to put it down. I feel very strongly about that.

I did Bronislaw Kaper's tune. He wrote "On Green Dolphin Street." I mean, I did all those ballads, all them ballads from South America. All those tunes - the guitar concerto on Sketches Of Spain. All those are Spanish melodies. Some of them we made up ourselves.

If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

The music speaks for itself!

Like Ron Lorman's always sayin', "Na-na-na-na-na," you know what I mean? I don't need that in the studio.

The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones.

Always listen for what you can leave out.

For me, music and life are all about style.

You should never be comfortable, man. Being comfortable fouled up a lot of musicians.

If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted.

Drummers - sometimes they play and they listen. And that little listen takes a speck away from the right tempo.

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.

...people will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype. They want to be hip, want always to be in on the new thing so they don't look unhip. White people are especially like that, particularly when a black person is doing something they don't understand...That's what I thought was happening when Ornette hit town.

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.

When the band plays fast, you play slow; when the band plays slow, you play fast.

There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.

Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.

It's a different ballgame now, so that lets [teo] Macero out. He's always complainin', always sick.

It takes you years to learn how to play like yourself.

The melody is French. But that's the end of the record. I named it "Jean Pierre Then There Were None," you know, because of the big explosion. You'll like it. It's a nice album.

It's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play.

Play what you know and then play above that

Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.

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.

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.

I was minding my own business when something says to me, "you ought to blow trumpet." I have just been trying ever since.

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

Joao Gilberto on guitar could read a newspaper and sound good.

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.

When we edit the music, I always remember, "It's my band. Save me a place to play."

You can tell whether a person plays well or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not.

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.

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.

In other words, an instrument should be an extension of you; it's supposed to sound like you - the way you walk, the way you dress, you know.

All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.

I always listen to what I can leave out.