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1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

Miles Davis

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More Miles Davis Quotes

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

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• 

  I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning… Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

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• 

  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.

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• 

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

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• 

  I ain’t no entertainer, and ain’t trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician.

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• 

  Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player.

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• 

  I always listen to what I can leave out.

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• 

  If you don’t know what to play, play nothing.

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  Always look ahead, but never look back.

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• 

  Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

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

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• 

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

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• 

  First you imitate, then you innovate.

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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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• 

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

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• 

  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.

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