Miles Davis - Play Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

View all Miles Davis Quotes
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 ass kicked.

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.

Miles Davis
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.

Miles Davis
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
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
The toughest critic I got and the only one I worry about is myself. My music has got to get past me and I'm too vain to play anything I think is bad.

Miles Davis
Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player. I can only do one thing—play my horn.... I ain't no entertainer and I ain't trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician.

Miles Davis