Miles davis quotes

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

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.

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

If I hear a song like "Time After Time." I'm sittin' there lookin' at video and Cindy Lauper comes on singin' this song. I said, "God damnnnnn!"

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.

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

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.

Food makes my mind sluggish.

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

Certain drummers drop time, and I like to play on top of the beat.

It takes a long time to sound like yourself.

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!

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

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

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

I still got my Ferrari.

That's the way women do. The frown. They want to give you the attitude to approach them back, by giving you a negative vibe.

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.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype.

A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.

I would never try and play like Harry James, because I don't like his tone - for me. It's just white. You know what I mean? He has what we black trumpet players call a white sound. But it's for white music ... I can tell a white trumpet player, just listening to a record. There'll be something he'll do that'll let me know that he's white.

Music is an addiction.

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

Tom Jones is funny to me, man. I mean, he really tries to ape Ray Charles and Sammy Davis, you know. He's nice-looking; he looks good doing it. I mean, if I was him, I'd do the same thing. If I was only thinking about making money.

If you're going to drop behind, you have to keep it there.

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

A painting is music you can see and music is a painting you can hear.

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 don't care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.

Keith, how does it feel to be a genius?

It's like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of s-- is that, but white people's s--?

If you have to ask, you'll never know.

Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.

I don't like to hear someone put down dixieland. Those people who say there's no music but bop are just stupid; it shows how much they don't know.

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

For me, music and life are all about style.

When you work with great musicians, they are always a part of you . . . their spirits are walking around in me, so they're still here and passing it on to others.

Do not be afraid of errors. There are no errors.

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

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.

Monk was a gentle person, gentle and beautiful, but he was strong as an ox. And if I had ever said something about punching Monk out in front of his face - and I never did - then somebody should have just come and got me and taken me to the madhouse, because Monk could have just picked my little ass up and thrown me through a wall.

Some 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.

Don't be afraid of mistakes - There are none.

In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.

If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.

The way you change and help music is by tryin' to invent new ways to play

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.

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

The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them...I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.

The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.

My future starts when I wake up every morning.

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.

Music is the framework around the silence.

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

It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

Jazz is an Uncle Tom word. They should stop using that word for selling. I told George Wein the other day that he should stop using it.

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.

First you imitate, then you innovate.

We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences.

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 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.

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?"

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.

Some day I'm gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.

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

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.

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That's a little bit too much.

Audiences - they like colour, you know. I can go out there wearing a red suit, man, and they'll say I'm out of sight ... I think they should be educated; you should always drop something on an audience ... When you get in front of an audience, you should try to give 'em something. After all, they're there looking at you like this. You can't go out and give 'em nothing.

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 like Stan [Getz], because he has so much patience, the way he plays those melodies - other people can't get nothing out of a song, but he can, which takes a lot of imagination.

I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens.

To keep creating you have to be about change.

If you're trying to be hip, be hip.

You can't eat a winner's plaque.

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

John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive

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

If you're not nervous then you're not paying attention.

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.

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

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

I don't pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself...and I'm too vain to play anything I think is bad.

I don't hold it against Dizzy [Gillespie], you know, but if a guy wants to play a certain way, you work towards that. If he stops - he's full of crap, you know. I mean, I wouldn't do it, for no money, or for no place in the white man's world. Not just to make money, because then you don't have anything. You don't have as much money as whoever you're trying to ape; that's making money by being commercial. Then you don't have anything to give the world; so you're not important. You might as well be dead.

See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens.

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

You can't play anything on a horn that Louis Armstrong hasn't played

Always look ahead, but never look back.

I said to [Lionel] Richie, "Man, my wife says you must really respect women because you write such beautiful love songs."

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

...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.

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

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.

You have to practice for a long time before you can learn to sound like yourself

You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.

It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

I always listen to what I can leave out.

White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything - you know what I mean?

I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis.

That was my gift . . . having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a chemistry and then letting them go; letting them play what they knew, and above it.

There are no wrong notes.

Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!

I think every Negro over fifty should get a medal for putting up with all that crap.

My ego only needs a good rhythm section

At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.

Play what you know and then play above that

If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that you play that determines if it's good or bad.

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.

I'm not messing around with nobody's woman. If I want a woman I go get her - you know what I mean?

I think the greatest sound in the world is the human voice.

A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.

We're not going to play the blues anymore. Let the white folks play the blues. They got 'em, so they can keep 'em.

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.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

I've come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I've never got there. . . . I'm always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play everyday.

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.

You can dominate a game if you dominate on the line... We're just going to have to go out there and work hard and blow people off the ball, and let our runners do what they do best.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

I mean, it makes me sick when I see a white man sitting there smiling at me being entertaining, man. When I know what he's gonna do after he gets through. You know, when you see that thing on their face - like: "Entertain me." You know what I mean? Even the black guy that's trying to be white - even he can have that crap on his face.

You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.

Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.

Always listen for what you can leave out.

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