Miles Davis defied categorization and flouted convention with his experiments that began with mixing different musical styles, tones, instruments, and enhancements. This produced throttled notes and haunting tones which gave him a taste of what he could create. Taking his new found knowledge he jumped head first into the world of experimenting and tested the limits of music. He surrounded himself with small ensembles and hungry artists with the knowledge that he there were no limits to where his music could go.
Everything Davis did was unexpected. The members of his bands were never sure what would happen in a given day. Davis was known to leave the practice space and let them solve their own problems as a group. He also told his groups that they each needed to break loose from what they knew and find their own voice and let it sing. Davis and his bands “sought out the soul of the music” (Wagman 1), even though the soul was constantly shifting. That just meant another experiment was to be found and needed to start.
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Davis’ performances were free flowing with many improvisational shifts and unexpected dynamic contrasts. Depending on the day, the sounds that flowed from his band could be described as slick, funky, heavy, and unworldly. According to Tim Cumming, he described it as, “Panic-attack beats punctuate hallucinatory loops that derail the listener while at the same time driving you on with a disembodied funky beat.” (Cumming 3) Davis and his bands had the talent to confuse the listener and at the same time, make music that was