Miles Davis Quotes - Page 6

[Jazz musicians] feel comfortable with their clichés, you know.

I gave the album [You're Under Arrest] to Quincy Jones and he loved "D Train". We couldn't call it "D Train"; it's called "MDI/Something's On Your Mind/MD2". That's on the album.

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.

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.

[Prince] could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll.

So What or Kind of Blue were done in that era, the right hour, the right day. It's over; it's on the record.

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.

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.

It's always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it.

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

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

When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads

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.

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.

You have to be born with it. You can't even buy it. If you could buy it, they'd have it at the next Newport Festival.

I've gotten hernias from drummers when they drop tempo.

If I have a dynamite bass player - I have Darryl Jones - it's so easy to write for him because he's such a funky kid and he's gifted. He's like a little genius.

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.

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

When I went in there, we used drum machine on "Time After Time" and "Human Nature".We don't use the drum machine to play a pattern. You play the pattern by being consistent.

I couldn't do "What's Love Got To Do With It", Tina Turner because it wasn't the right tempo; so I scratched it from the record. I wanted to do it about a year ago, but something happened.

The music speaks for itself!

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

As long as I've been playing, they never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it.

Birth of the Cool' became a collector's item, I think, out of a reaction to Bird and Dizzy's music. Bird and Diz played this hip, real fast thing, and if you weren't a fast listener, you couldn't catch the humor or the feeling in their music. Their musical sound wasn't sweet, and it didn't have harmonic lines that you could easily hum out on the street with your girlfriend trying to get over with a kiss.