Miles Davis Quotes

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.

Naw, I wasn't going to sell my principles for them. I wanted to be accepted as a good musician and that didn't call for no grinning, but just being able to play the horn good. And that's what I did then and now. Critics can take that or leave it.

He could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll.

Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.

When I got into music I went all the way into music; I didn't have no time after that for nothing else.

I remember one time - it might have been a couple times - at the Fillmore East in 1970, I was opening for this sorry-ass cat named Steve Miller. Steve Miller didn't have his shit going for him, so I'm pissed because I got to open for this non-playing motherfucker just because he had one or two sorry-ass records out. So I would come late and he would have to go on first and then we got there we smoked the motherfucking place, everybody dug it.

Take it off! That's some sad __, man. In the first place, I hear some Charlie Parker cliches. . . . They don't even fit. Is that what the critics are digging? Them critics better stop having coffee. If there ain't nothing to listen to, they might as well admit it. Just to take something like that and say it's great, because there ain't nothing to listen to, that's like going out and getting a prostitute. [Leonard Feather: This man said he was influenced by Duke Ellington.] I don't give a ! It must be . Right? I don't care who he's inspired by. That __ ain't nothing. In the first place he don't have the - you know, the way you touch a piano. He doesn't have the touch that would make the sound of whatever he thinks of come off. I can tell he's influenced by Duke, but to put the loud pedal on the piano and make a run is very old-fashioned to me. And when the alto player sits up there and plays without no tone . . . That's the reason I don't buy any records.

You can tell whether a person plays or not by the way he carries the instrument, whether it means something to him or not. Then the way they talk and act. If they act too hip, you know they can’t play shit.

"You can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played." and "I love Pops" (Louis' nickname) … Louis has been through all kinds of styles. That's good tuba, by the way. You know you can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played — I mean even modern. I love his approach to the trumpet; he never sounds bad. He plays on the beat — with feeling. That's another phrase for swing. I also love the way he sings.

Si no pudiera descubrir o enriquecer el arte, encontrar nuevos enfoques, me sentiría culpable de estar vivo. Preferiría la muerte a la ausencia de creación. No tendría ninguna razón para vivir si no pudiera crear, digamos, una composición. No que le guste a alguien, sino que me satisfaga, que les guste a mis amigos. Que me digan: 'Sí, Miles, qué bueno'. Sin eso, no querría vivir. Sé que es egoísta, ¡pero los genios son egoístas!

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

Time isn't the main thing. It's the only thing.

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

Is that what you wanted, Alfred?

He never wasted a melody. He never wasted a phrase. He and Duke Ellington changed the whole sound. There is no way to describe it because there's nobody on this earth that can do that anymore. What he did to the texture of an orchestration, what he did with a pop song is like writing an original piece. Students will discover him. They'll have to take his music apart layer by layer. That's how they'll know what kind of genius he was.