Quotes About Improvisation

'Station to Station' is a series of happenings that go across the landscape. What is a happening? A happening is a moment in time. A moment in time that is not choreographed, where you don't know precisely what's going on. Where there are aspects of different layers of culture.

The only way to stay sharp is to do live shows. There is no part-time comedy.

It's pretty rare in jazz to have a full-on steady band.

I do a very poor man's pedal steel on the Stratocaster.

I like that feeling of letting loose, of not planning every step. The best performances are the ones that you just let happen.

As a coach, they would love to sit there and say, 'It's going to be five steps, you're going to hitch up into a perfect pocket, you're going to look at number one - no; you're going to go to number two - no.' It doesn't work that way.

There aren't any concrete steps to becoming a comic.

I try new stuff every time I perform. I have steps I do that I know are definite, and stuff I can make up right then and there and then forget.

Actually an impromptu mini-master plan, not to be confused with the fleeting notion, half-baked idea, or emergency room spin-story for a masturbation mishap.

There are no rules in live television.

With Freebass, there were no rules, really. It was all rather chaotic. Obviously, Hooky was playing the high end stuff, which he always does; Mani was doing the bottom end, and I thought I'd go midway and meet everyone in the middle.

There were no rules, other than that the song should sound good and be fun to play.

I never learned to cook, so I've got no rules. I'll put things together just because I think they belong together.

You know, I'd forget words and start just singing noises.

When you play a sax, that saxophone is irreverent. It's noisy; it's a trickster... you cannot hide the saxophone in your hands, so it's a good teacher.

I always tell people that, just to be a bad jazz musician, you have to be better than most musicians. The worst jazz musicians are normally better than most musicians, because you have to know so much.

Normally, when I write the setlist for a Dream Theater show, I'll change it up every night, and we can basically play whatever we want.

When I was a young lad just out of college at the North Carolina School of the Arts, I directed several plays that I wrote. It was essential theater, meaning we had no money, so our set may be six stools and two chairs and eight cream pies.

I love starting a track in one place and not knowing where it's going to end up.

There's a certain amount of joy in playing a character in the moment and not knowing what's going to roll out as it goes on. It's a bit like life, in a way.

I will literally open my mouth not knowing what is coming out.

I like not knowing what's around the corner. It's always been that way, and maybe that's one of the reasons why I'm an actor.

I never look at a note. I just roam the stage. The people do not want to leave.

I need to hear what I am doing in order to create the next note. If I don't hear it then I can't feed myself.