Miles Davis

I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light. Then I’m grateful.

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

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

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

[On Louis Armstrong] You can’t play nothing on modern trumpet that doesn’t come from him, not even modern shit. I can’t even remember a time when he sounded bad playing the trumpet. Never. Not even one time. He had great feeling up in his playing and he always played on the beat. I just loved the way he played and sang.

Music and life are all about style.

It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something.

I bought my first electric guitar when I moved to Memphis; a Gibson with a DeArmond pickup which I used with a small Gibson amplifier.

My role in society, or any artist or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

People don’t want to suffer. They want to sound good immediately and this is one of the biggest problems.

The emotional reaction is all that matters.

When you begin to teach Jazz, the most dangerous thing is to teach style.

Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument.

I started to like blues, I guess, when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There was something about it, because nobody else played that kind of music.

When it comes to music, don’t lie to yourself; just tell yourself the truth.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel not the way others think you should feel.

Early on, I figured out that when the top of a guitar is vibrating and a string is vibrating, you’ve got a conflict. One of them has got to stop, and it can’t be the string, because that’s making the sound. So in 1934, I asked the Larson Brothers—Chicago instrument makers—to build me a guitar with a half-inch-thick maple top and no f-holes. They thought I was crazy.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

Each time I have the opportunity to play, it’s another chance to tell the truth.

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I’d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

As a little kid, blues meant hope, excitement, pure emotion. Blues were about feelings. They seem to bring out the feelings of the artist and they brought out my feelings as a kid. They made me wanna move, or sing, or pick up Reverend’s guitar and figure out how to make those wonderful sounds.