Miles Davis famous quotes

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

#Play #Four #Notes

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
-- Miles Davis

#Life #Music #Beautiful

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Morning #Future #Creativity

My future starts when I wake up every morning.
-- Miles Davis

#Morning #Wake Up #My Future

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Father #Play

For me, music and life are all about style.
-- Miles Davis

#Style #Music And Life

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

#Music #Men #Legends

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

#School #Eye #Boys

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Art #Thinking #Order

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

#Music #Guitar #Self

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

#Music #Men #Musician

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the ***** who plays it is 80 percent.
-- Miles Davis

#Attitude #Play #Notes

You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Causes #Quitting

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?
-- Miles Davis

#Years #Practice #Play

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

#Change #Creating #Acting

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

#Music #Men #Artist

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

#Phones #Answers #Shut Up

Bebop didn't have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn't have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging -- but that weren't sweet.
-- Miles Davis

#Sweet #Bird #Humanity

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

#Music #Play #Audience

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Musical #Festivals #Next

My ego only needs a good rhythm section
-- Miles Davis

#Ego #Needs #Rhythm

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

#Play #Notes

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

#Music #Museums #Glasses

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

#Music #Mistake #Europe

There are no wrong notes.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Notes

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Jazz #Heroin

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

#Play #White #Ems

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

#Years #Giving #One Day

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Stupid #People #Bops

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

#Mistake

It takes a long time to sound like yourself.
-- Miles Davis

#Long #Sound #Like You

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

#Play

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Art #Sacrifice #Men

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

#Done #Legends #Miles

If you're trying to be hip, be hip.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Trying #Hips

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Technology #Thinking #People

All my inspiration comes from Ahmad Jamal.
-- Miles Davis

#Inspiration

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.
-- Miles Davis

#Brother #Musical #Revolution

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Thinking #Play #Pay

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

#Play #Next #Notes

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Feet #Guy #Feels

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 ***** up and thrown me through a wall.
-- Miles Davis

#Beautiful #Strong #Wall

Always look ahead, but never look back.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Looks

Coltrane, you cant play everything at once!
-- Miles Davis

#Play #Jazz #Coltrane

Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Matter #Kind

I'm out there doing the best that I can, My lip is cut and I'm still playing.
-- Miles Davis

#Cutting #Lips #Stills

In music, silence is more important than sound.
-- Miles Davis

#Silence #Important #Experience

I always listen to what I can leave out.
-- Miles Davis

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

#Music #Museums #Pieces

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

#Music #Understood

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

#Music #Play #Way

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery
-- Miles Davis

#Ignorance #Slavery

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

#Music #Swings #Purple

Don't play what's there, play what's not there.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Play #African American

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Blue #Done

If you're not nervous then you're not paying attention.
-- Miles Davis

#Attention #Nervous #Pay Attention

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Musician #Spirit #Great Music

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Art #Play #Band

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

#Practice #Long #Sound

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Book #School #Kids

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Night #Play #Bird

John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive
-- Miles Davis

#Men #Alive

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Play #Notes

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

#Worry #Jazz #Notes

Do not be afraid of errors. There are no errors.
-- Miles Davis

#Errors

Food makes my mind sluggish.
-- Miles Davis

#Food #Mind

Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player.
-- Miles Davis

#Player #Men #Ego

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Uncles #Jazz #Selling

Keith, how does it feel to be a genius?
-- Miles Davis

#Genius #Keith #Doe

I really liked Wynton when I first met him. He's still a nice young man, only confused.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Nice #Confused

I began to realize that some of the things Ornette Coleman had said about things being played three or fours ways, independently of each other, were true because Bach had also composed that way.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Three #Way

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Space #Perfect

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.
-- Miles Davis

#People #Jazz #Speak

To keep creating you have to be about change.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Creating

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

#Best Love #Morning #Eye

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

#Blow #Trying #Trumpets

Music is the framework around the silence.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Silence #Framework

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Way #Hearing

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

#Thinking #Funny Things #Music Is

When I heard Coleman Hawkins, I learned to play ballads
-- Miles Davis

#Play #Ballads #Heard

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Play #Guy #Together

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Nice #Men #White

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

#Musical #Taught #Jazz

In improvisation, there are no mistakes.
-- Miles Davis

#Mistake #Improvisation

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

#Play #Way #Helping

I still got my Ferrari.
-- Miles Davis

#Ferrari #Jazz #Stills

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

#White #Long #Guy

A legend is an old man with a cane...
-- Miles Davis

#Men #African American #Legends

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

#Music #Play #Horns

...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.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Hype #White

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 ***** kicked.
-- Miles Davis

#Play #People #Might

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

#Music #Guitar #Sound

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.
-- Miles Davis

#Hard Work #Blow #Games

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

#Play #Guitar #Band

Music is an addiction.
-- Miles Davis

#Music #Addiction #Jazz

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--?
-- Miles Davis

#White #America #Discovery