Quotes About Improvisation

I'd like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I've heard.

You don't really know what you're going to get until you're actually in Abbey Road. That's where I did all the music, in The Beatles' place.

I think that music, or at least the kind of music that I make, benefits greatly from improvisation.

The music dictates to me which instrument I use. I'm basically waiting for orders as it were.

It's not instant composing; it's not following any kind of a formula. All you do is hear music in your head and reproduce it.

Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in jazz.

Charlie Parker lifted jazz music off the dance floor and into the stratosphere!

Lots of the bands [in New Orleans] couldn't read too much music. So they used a fiddle to play the lead - a fiddle player could read - and that was to give them some protection.

The score must govern the music. It must have authority, and not merely be an arbitrary jumping-off point for improvisation.

Jazz is the music of unemployment.

As an improvising musician, I am not in the music business, I am not in the creativity business; I am in the surrender business.

The soul of our music, The Monkees' music, lies somewhere inbetween the 1 1/2 , the 2 1/2, the 3 3/4 and th giant C-major chord on the piano!

I play music - I write my own music, but I play music, just background music really, and just let it happen.

Jazz music by its very nature is just a conglomerate of a lot of different kinds of music.

The problem that I have is with the music business. For some reason it seems almost impossible to get anything, any music, released which includes improvisation or soloing.

The moment you start to talk about playing music, you destroy music. It cannot be talked about. It can only be played, enjoyed and listened to.

I love music, I love all kinds of music, particularly jazz. Jazz is an extension of America. There's no other country in the world that could have produced jazz.

Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.

Nature is a tinkerer, not an inventor.

It is Jazz's very nature to change, to develop & adapt to the circumstances of its environment.

Jazz is democracy in music.

Most of us lead lives of chaotic improvisation from day to day, bawling for peace while plunging grimly into fresh disorders.

Analysis kills spontaneity.

When you have a great audience, you can just keep going and finding new things.