Quotes About Improvisation

In my work, I have never had any use for anything that I have known in advance.

The only planning I do is about a minute before I play. I desperately try to think of something that will be effective, but I never sit down and work it out note for note.

I use all sorts of things to work with: old brooms, old sweaters, and all kinds of peculiar tools and materials... I paint to excite myself, and make something for myself.

The thing about being an actor is that every new job is a new challenge. Sometimes you'll have a shot, and it doesn't work. Sometimes it'll work better than you expected.

I know all about improvisation and the free-form that mirrors the chaos of our time, but I do like to feel that the playwright has done some work before I got there.

People's association with improvisation means one person playing an endless stream of notes over something, and it doesn't have to be.

I basically just write stream of consciousness to a certain extent. I let the song kind of go where it wants to go.

Sometimes when you start writing a song, you dont know where theyre going to lead you. You just kind of follow the ideas that come in. Its all kind of stream of consciousness. Thats whats so fascinating about songwriting. Its kind of magical.

Actually, I started off playing by ear and being around a bunch of musicians playing in the streets in the different parades.

My brother shaved a cricket bat out of a coconut branch... we played cricket with anything we put our hands on - a hard orange, a lime, a marble - anything we could use in the backyard or the streets.

In comedy, my strengths are improvisation.

I hardly ever stretch the canvas before painting.

On stage you're supposed to have fun and play different licks and stretch out. You're not supposed to copy your records exactly.

When you're doing comedy constantly, you're organized: you know where everything is, you know how to get out of it, you know how to stretch it. But, like, doing 'SNL,' I stopped doing spots, and then I would finally do some sets - it take me so long to, kind of, get in the rhythm of it.

Sometimes I think that I want to do something strictly basic, really simple. Just with a few chords. But I won't have anything more than two or three sentences in my head. That kind of evaporates once I start playing and then it goes off in whatever direction.

Anything you strike, anything you shake or rattle, or just anything that can be picked up, and you can create a sound.

Give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string; I wouldn't get bored anywhere.

When I practise scales I will play four notes on one string. If I'm playing a C major scale, starting on F, I'll play the F, G, A, and B on one string and the C will be on the A string, etc, etc. Because I found not only was it good for my hands but it was really good for interconnecting things.

I can fish from a stick and a string.

I used to break three or four strings a night, and the show would be over because I didn't know how to change the strings.

I needed a capo - a clamp to hold down the strings - so my daddy made me one out of a corn on the cob and a rubber band.

Music is multi-dimensional: it's all in the feeling. Sometimes I feel like looping; sometimes I don't. Sometimes I want to strip it back, play instruments I've never played before.

Stand-up is very broad strokes, kind of a skeleton of a story or something.

Being a comfortable public speaker, which involves easily being able to go off-script, strongly signals competence.