Quotes About Improvisation

I usually make films with $2 and a paper clip.

A lot of the stuff I was on 'All Stars,' it wasn't new, it was all stuff out of my closet and stuff that I made myself.

People used to think we just faked all that stuff... it was all written, rehearsed. The fact that it looks as cobbled together as it does is just that we weren't very good.

I don't consider myself a comedian, but you work with some comedians, and sometimes these guys are incredible on their feet - it's just amazing - and that's not what I do. But it's always fun, and I don't really care as long as the character is interesting.

It might look like some incredibly complicated map to get from English period films to American action anti-heroes, but it really is just about not having a plan.

I find it very difficult to compose when I'm not playing.

As improvisers, we're acting as composers in front of people.

I don't like to box myself in when I'm composing.

I'd like to play for you one of my compositions, my only composition.

When I'm in stage, I never plan, you know, 'I'm going to do this.' But of course, you have a concept what you're going to do. But you don't really plan it.

There's an awful lot of resources that can be drawn upon in an improvised music concert.

I love the you-never-know-what's-going-to-happen aspect of doing concerts.

In TV, you're always confused because you legitimately don't know what you're doing the next week.

The great majority of people are calm, resourceful, altruistic or even beyond altruistic, as they risk themselves for others. We improvise the conditions of survival beautifully.

Imagination is an instrument of survival.

I like people that can strap on a guitar and don't sweat the fact that you have to come up with a song in an hour. I want to work with someone who won't feel like they have to play along with Jason Molina. I want them to just have the confidence.

Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm.

The main three components are the blues, improvisation - which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up - and swing, which means even though they're making up music, they're trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you're having a great conversation with somebody.

We play rock & roll, but we swing when we play. We want that ongoing flow, that lightness, that forward rush of jazz.

I'd take the syncopation and play swing, and then read the syncopation lines with my left hand.

As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.

I learned how to make an endoscope using a Swiss Army Knife, a cell phone camera, cell phone, and chewing gum.

I go to each job and open my little briefcase up, and I take out the things that I have or I know. It might be a Swiss army knife, a quart of milk and a ruler. That might be all I can bring to it, but that's what I have.

I didn't think of myself as a lead player, especially when we did live shows, because me and Keith used to switch around all the time. He'd take a lead, I'd play rhythm. Sometimes even within one song. It wasn't strict and regimented.