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 DAVISSome 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.
More Miles Davis Quotes
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If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you’re in love.
MILES DAVIS -
Music is the framework around the silence.
MILES DAVIS -
I’m not messing around with nobody’s woman. If I want a woman I go get her – you know what I mean?
MILES DAVIS -
It takes a long time to sound like yourself.
MILES DAVIS -
I can’t write anything for myself. I can write when I hear like [John] Coltrane play something; I used to write chords and stuff for him to play in one bar. I can write for other people, but I don’t never write for myself.
MILES DAVIS -
Americans don’t like any form of art, man. All they like to do is make money. They don’t like me, Sammy Davis, or anybody else. They don’t like nothing. They just like Sammy because he can make ’em a lot of money.
MILES DAVIS -
If you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that determines if it’s good or bad.
MILES DAVIS -
You can’t eat a winner’s plaque.
MILES DAVIS -
The way you change and help music is by tryin’ to invent new ways to play.
MILES DAVIS -
You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.
MILES DAVIS -
In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.
MILES DAVIS -
I think every Negro over fifty should get a medal for putting up with all that crap.
MILES DAVIS -
If you have to ask, you’ll never know.
MILES DAVIS -
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.
MILES DAVIS -
Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!
MILES DAVIS