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Quotes About Improvisation

There are no recipes, only ingredients~
~ Mireille Guiliano
Gastronomic boredom leads to lots of unhealthy eating. If you don't make improvisation and experimentation part of your eating life, you are sure to find yourself in an eating rut.
~ Mireille Guiliano
I wanted to buy a candle holder, but the store didn't have one. So I got a cake.
~ Mitch Hedberg
I was so wild and crazy and dumb in my car. It didn't run but 30 miles an hour. You made do.
~ Muddy Waters
There is much more to playing the clavier than playing written music. Do you realize with accompanying there is often nothing written out but the bass line--the left hand? There might be a few notations as to a suggested harmony, but it is up to me to fill in the music, at the proper volume, style, and harmony for the soloist--often instantly. I've heard it said that Bach questioned wether the soloist or the accompanist deserves the greatest glory.
~ Unknown
There is an old joke: A physicist, an engineer, and an economist are stranded on a desert island with nothing but canned food. The physicist proposes to make a fire and heat the can until it bursts. The engineer proposes to climb to a local ridge and drop the can, which will burst on landing. The economist says: "Assume a can opener.
~ Naomi Oreskes
Being a musician enables a person to bend the notes and express things that are inside you, no matter what.
~ Neil Young
because Beethoven did not know where it was going to end up. That, of course, is the point of sketching.
~ Unknown
Criminals in Ecuador follow the mantra of the U.S. Marines: Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome.
~ Unknown
Within a couple of years, I had gravitated towards a group of friends from the neighbourhood who had also discovered rock 'n' roll, and it seemed an excellent idea to put a band together. The fact that none of us knew how to play was only a minor setback, since we didn't have any instruments.
~ Nick Mason
Llorar de amor, de hastío, de alegría. Llorar de frac, de flato, de flacura. Llorar improvisando, de memoria. ¡Llorar todo el insomnio y todo el día!
~ Unknown
Self study leads to improvisation and improvisation leads to evolution.
~ Unknown
The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.
~ Oscar Wilde
The art of not playing in tempo--one has to learn it. And the art of not playing what is written on the printed paper.
~ Pablo Casals
Los libros se hacen con lo que se tiene y no necesariamente con lo que se quiere.
~ Paco Ignacio Taibo II
The beauty of jazz is that it's malleable. People are addressing it to suit their own personalities.
~ Pat Metheny
At times baking soda and yeast were not to be had. Individuals were issued rations, including flour, to utilize as best they could. Because of lack of equipment, especially when men were on the march, bread-making was sometimes accomplished in the manner described by Timothy Mitchell, writing home to southwest Virginia from Tennessee: "Our flour we make up in an oil cloth, back of a dirty shirt, or towel; roll it 'round a stick and hold it before the fire." [26]
~ Unknown
To respond to a question or start improvised scenes, begin immediately using the first words that come to you. Trust your mind. Your first thought is a reasonable starting place; it is good enough. Don't hesitate. Once you begin speaking, you have something to work with and build on. With the first-thought method it is as if the idea selects you rather than the other way around. The improviser focuses on making that idea into a good one, rather than searching for a "good idea.
~ Unknown
A good improviser is someone who is awake, not entirely self-focused, and moved by a desire to do something useful and give something back and who acts upon this impulse.
~ Unknown
The practice of improvisation (in contrast, say, to that of writing or painting) teaches something that we are hungry to understand: how to be in harmony with one another and how to have fun. We practice improvisation not only to "express ourselves" but to connect with others in a more immediate way.
~ Unknown
We made a successful, last-minute effort to get the French Open many years ago, when the USA network bailed on it. I remember, four of us jumped on a plane on the spur of the moment to cover it. I think we had someone draw up a sign (by hand) that we could hold up in front of the camera to tell viewers that it was ESPN coverage.
~ Patrick McEnroe
Por desgracia, la vida casi nunca tiene un guión tan meticuloso.
~ Patrick Rothfuss
When we got to the part where we had to improvise an argument in a poetic language, I got cold feet. "I can't do this," I said. "I don't know what to say." "Say anything," he said. "You can't make a mistake when you improvise." "What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?" "You can't," he said. "It's like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another." In this simple exchange, Sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that I have accessed my whole life.
~ Patti Smith
Jimi Hendrix] dreamed of amassing musicians from all over the world in Woodstock and they would sit in a field in a circle and play and play. It didn't matter what key or tempo or what melody, they would keep on playing through their discordance until they found a common language. Eventually they would record this abstract universal language of music in his new studio. "The language of peace. You dig?" I did.
~ Patti Smith