Quotes About Improvisation

To me, the best projects are the ones where you have a pretty good idea of what the spine of it's gonna be, but then all sorts of things happen that you could've never predicted, and those are the magic moments of the films.

Shooting should not be about delivering something I've prepared; it should be a live process of finding things out. When things happen that you haven't planned, that's when the film comes alive.

Being jazz-trained, things happen spontaneously. Even though it's funk rock, we still have the instincts of a jazz musician.

That's the great thing about filmmaking: Things happen you don't know are going to happen at the end.

Sometimes, thinking on your feet can be the most creative. Constrained circumstances can bring the best out of you. Some of the most successful shows come out of shoestring invention.

As long as I know what key the solo is in, I try to kind of empty my mind and not think about anything. I just play without thinking.

Well, I tell you... the first chorus, I plays the melody. The second chorus, I plays the melody round the melody, and the third chorus, I routines.

It's just a way of trying to get to a third thing that's not particular to any quote-unquote genre. It's been great for me; it's really opened me up and gotten me to use that part of my imagination. It's very scary in a lot of ways, and just as exciting.

More live recording. I have missed the boat over my career by not doing every second or third CD live because things happen onstage that don't happen in the studio.

Out of 30 years of Second City I was probably the third African-American with the main stage cast. I was surprised when I first heard that. I think part of the reason that improvisation has never been popular with African-Americans is that it isn't popular in the inner cities.

I think music naturally wants to be played with more than one person. There's a surprise element, and you don't know what it will be, and it's up to that other person's energy to help create this third thing.

I learned one thing from De Niro: He taught me to listen. Nobody says anything strictly from the script. It's improvised. It was the best piece of advice I have ever gotten in my life. It has helped me through the past thirty years.

For the last thirty years in my career I never know what I'm doing next.

There's something about live players that you cannot get with machines: With live musicians, you can strike a groove, you can feed off each other... And, even though somebody might make a slight mistake, it's all real!

I don't rehearse on either of my shows, 'Family Feud' or my talk show. I never rehearse with the guests. I don't want to have any preconceived thoughts, notions, because that kills my creativity as a host and as a stand up.

If you actually do cold readings, it's very close to how people actually talk, because you're experiencing these thoughts anew every moment, and trying to make them come out coherently.

There are a thousand ways to play any role.

Napoleon once summarized his idea of strategic military planning: "You engage, and then you wait and see." By making contact with the enemy and then improvising, he triumphed and made his armies the envy (and the scourge) of Europe. His

This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say. I don't plan it. When I'm outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

In times of crisis, it's wonderful what the imagination will do.

R&B and all that stuff was always very spare and spontaneous. Nobody made those records under solid gold situations. It was just in and out, and you didn't labor over the thing. I like music like that.

The movie has Marty say "blues riff in B" and then WHAM, the entire band is playing Johnny B. Goode like they've done so for years.  It's amazing, and as a kid, I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out.  How was it possible that everyone knew what notes to play and when to come in??  The backup guitar and drums both hit a beat at the beginning of the song without any communication whatsoever.

Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.

You can do great things with low-tech stuff.