Quotes About Improvisation

When you have no money, you need invention.

It's normally in the morning, just playing around. And I'm not saying everything I make is great, but that's what I do. I can't even remember how I wrote stuff.

I used my mother's radio as a PA system. I'd take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.

I didn't ask my mother to buy me a trumpet or a violin, I started right on the water hose.

The mother of invention in music is necessity, not Frank Zappa!

A good director's not sure when he gets on the set what he's going to do.

My movies, in general, I have the impression that when they finish of course they're never originally what you had in mind.

Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once.

You can't overthink the music. Mood and intensity can't be manufactured. The blues isn't about structure; it's what you bring to it. The spontaneity of capturing a specific moment is what drives it.

Jazz is freedom. You think about that.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.

Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.

I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession. If you can, then it ain't music, it's close order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.

To jazz, or not to jazz, there is no question!

You don't rehearse jazz to death to get the camera angles.

I was improvising before I was reading music. I was just trying to play things on the clarinet by ear. I think my ear is one of my greatest assets.

Master your instrument. Master the music. And then forget all that bullshit and just play.

Regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going.

All a musician can do is to get closer to the source.

Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.

If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterward.

You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.