Originally Posted by
KRosser
Miles was probably my biggest influence when I was coming up. He's one of the reasons I wanted to learn to do this. I was born in 1962 so the first chance I had to see him was his post-sabbatical in 1982, in Boston. I saw him every chance I could after that, so many I lost count. If he came to town for more than one night I saw every night.
As with anyone, especially one with such a long and varied career, there are things I like more than others, and sometimes my appreciation for various different things changes of course. But he was always my main man.
One of the things I could say I learned from him was his sense of "narrative flow", for lack of a better term. Every line connected to the one before it in a way that carried me along, in a way that I loved and really wanted to emulate. I always appreciated how rarely Miles followed the cliche of "start low sparse and quiet and build to a loud fast high climax". Miles solos typically unfold more like a stream of consciousness. And I believe this was always there, whatever his periods, from the Bird recordings to Doo Bop. And I always appreciated how little Miles really cared about "mastering the trumpet", it was always about transcending the instrument to get to that narrative, to my ears.
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