110+ Miles Davis Quotes On Silence, Jazz And Time

Miles Davis was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is amongst the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th century music. He was at the forefront of almost every major development in jazz from World War II to the 1990s. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Miles Davis on silence, jazz, life.

Top 10 Miles Davis Quotes

1. Do not fear mistakes. There are none.
2. It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.
3. If you're not nervous then you're not paying attention.
4. We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences.
5. Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.
6. Don't worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.
7. People will go for anything they don't understand if it's got enough hype.
8. For me, music and life are all about style.
9. My future starts when I wake up every morning.
10. 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.

Miles Davis Image Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

Miles Davis Short Quotes

• My ego only needs a good rhythm section
• Food makes my mind sluggish.
• The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones.
• Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player.
• I'm not messing around with nobody's woman. If I want a woman I go get her - you know what I mean?
• In respect for drummers, see, I love drummers.
• A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.
• I've used [drum machine] because I have to have the perfect tempo.
• Do not fear mistakes -- there are none.
• Monk taught me more about music composition than anyone else on 52nd Street.

Miles Davis Quotes About Jazz

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

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

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

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

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

I still got my Ferrari. — Miles Davis

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

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

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

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

Miles Davis Quotes About Time

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

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

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!" — Miles Davis

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

Some of [drummers] drop time because they want to hear what you're doin'. — Miles Davis

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

They [police] do me like that all the time! "What you work for?". — Miles Davis

When I went in there, we used drum machine on "Time After Time" and "Human Nature".We don't use the drum machine to play a pattern. You play the pattern by being consistent. — Miles Davis

Miles Davis Quotes About Music

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

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

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. — Miles Davis

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

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

In improvisation, there are no mistakes. — Miles Davis

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

The music speaks for itself! — Miles Davis

Music is an addiction. — Miles Davis

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

Miles Davis Quotes About Play

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

Dave [Holland] plays the way he wants to play. And it's usually what's needed. You know, Dave is such a deep thinker. You can't tell him too much, else it might spoil his spirit, you know. — Miles Davis

It takes you years to learn how to play like yourself. — Miles Davis

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. — Miles Davis

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

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

You ever hear Buddy Miles play the drums? You know, he doesn't vary the tempo at all. — Miles Davis

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

I'll play it and tell you what it is later. — Miles Davis

Miles Davis Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

...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

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

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

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. — 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 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 Davis

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?" — Miles Davis

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. — Miles Davis

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. — Miles Davis

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. — Miles Davis

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

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

If you had to call it "unison", it ain't unison. It ain't the same as somebody else. If you can hear that it's unison, and you have to name it something other than "unison", it ain't unison, you know what I mean? It's two guys playin', but one guy is playin' slightly out of tune, one is playin' slightly off meter. — Miles Davis

I keep telling Ron Lorman and them in the control room, "It's my band! The reason I have a band is because I can't stand for somebody to tell me what to do." — Miles Davis

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

I couldn't do "What's Love Got To Do With It", Tina Turner because it wasn't the right tempo; so I scratched it from the record. I wanted to do it about a year ago, but something happened. — Miles Davis

That's the way you judge a car, man, [good or bad], when you start it up. It's just the same thing. I mean, I drive a Ferrari - not to be cute, but because I dig it. I'd rather drive a ten-year-old Ferrari than one of them new things-they don't go. — Miles Davis

I think the greatest sound in the world is the human voice. — Miles Davis

I did Bronislaw Kaper's tune. He wrote "On Green Dolphin Street." I mean, I did all those ballads, all them ballads from South America. All those tunes - the guitar concerto on Sketches Of Spain. All those are Spanish melodies. Some of them we made up ourselves. — Miles Davis

I've gotten hernias from drummers when they drop tempo. — Miles Davis

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

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

Somebody, my daughter or my wife, gave me a music box for Christmas. It plays "My Funny Valentine" on celeste, you know? So I had Bobby [Irving] just play "Jean Pierre" with the changes on celeste. — Miles Davis

It's like swimmin' without warmin' up, yuo know what I mean? So [cackles] we use the drum machine, and we take it out. — Miles Davis

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

[Prince] could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll. — Miles Davis

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

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

John Lee Hooker is the funkiest man alive — Miles Davis

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

Japanese people they hear my warmin' up and they start screamin'. They can tell it's me.It's my tone on the trumpet, it sounds like I'm speakin'. — Miles Davis

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

Maybe you play a melody twice. You play it once like you like it, and some parts that you don't like you can just switch. An eight-bar motive - you can just take it and put it in the front or back or something like that. It can save you 50 or 60 or 70,000 dollars, a drum machine. That's why everybody uses it. — Miles Davis

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

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

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

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

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

I put all those synthesizer sounds behind "Decoy" and "Code M.D." A lot of things we write together. A lot of things are his, but they don't have that thing I want on the bottom. I often tell him, I say, "Bobby [Irving], if there's a melody, there's another one somewhere that goes with it." — Miles Davis

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

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

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

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

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

The melody is French. But that's the end of the record. I named it "Jean Pierre Then There Were None," you know, because of the big explosion. You'll like it. It's a nice album. — Miles Davis

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

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. — Miles Davis

I can hear what I want [people] to play. If you don't hear what you want someone to play, then you can't tell 'em. — Miles Davis

Everybody ought to listen to Benny [Carter]. He's a whole musical education. — Miles Davis

If you make a suggestion and [musicians] don't know what you mean, you have to be able to do it yourself. I often sit down on drums and show 'em just exactly what I want. And I do it and then say, "How do you do that?" It's because I know how it looks, I know what I want to hear, and I don't drop or rush any tempo. It ain't in my body, it ain't in my nephew's body. — Miles Davis

Play what you know and then play above that — Miles Davis

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. — Miles Davis

Lionel [Richie] said, "Yeah, I learned chords and stuff playin' against your albums." — Miles Davis

Life Lessons by Miles Davis

1. Miles Davis taught us to never be afraid to take risks and push boundaries in order to create something unique and special.
2. He also showed us the importance of staying true to yourself and never compromising your artistic vision.
3. Finally, he demonstrated the power of resilience and perseverance to overcome any obstacle and continue to create great art.