Quotes About Improvisation

I demo all of my songs on Garage Band, where I pretty much play everything - not very well, but I manage to hammer out a drum beat and a bass idea.

I look at my clarinet sometimes and I think, I wonder what's going to come out of there tonight? You never know.

There's a wonderful tradition of jazz people getting on stage and jamming and finding some feeling for music with audiences who may be fresh. For others, it might be just like a comfortable shirt they've been wearing.

Karthi is such a wonderful human being. He is always focused towards improvisations and keeps working on it.

I enjoy playing the band as the band. I 'be' the whole band and I'm playing the drums, I'm playing the guitar, I'm playing the saxophone. To me, the most wonderful thing about playing music is that.

Jazz really does try to include everything. It's always been popular music. But the wonderful thing about jazz is its willingness to take chances.

Change is always happening. That's one of the wonderful things about jazz music.

I'm so entranced by what unfolds in front of the camera. It seems wonderfully out of my control.

When they say 'jazz,' I'm thinking of a word called 'the creative process.' It intersects every vein and tributary, avenue, path, that everyone's living. It crosses through there, but it's been contained.

With everything, 'Shooting Stars' included, we'll just have some words on a card to prompt us - 'How would Rod Stewart die,' that kind of thing - and we'll just run with that idea, as if we were talking to each other, messing around. And I'm no scholar of these things, but I think that's what double acts should do, isn't it?

A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow. Don't wait for an inspired ending to come to mind. Work your way to the ending and see what comes up.

Jazz is a hard music, and you have to really work hard and also have fun performing; that's the most important thing.

We did have a script, but it didn't consist of the routines and gags. It outlined the basic story idea and just a plan for us to follow. But when it came to each scene, we and the gagmen would work out ideas.

When I'm on stage, it's a little world I've created where I'm sort of the thing, so I have total control over everything that happens. When we're improvising, I'm with someone I totally trust. I know things are going to work out. I don't have those guarantees in life. There are no consequences on stage.

I never work out my leads. Everything I do is usually totally spontaneous. If someone says, 'That was good; play that again,' I'm not able to do it.

If I pick up a guitar, I don't practise scales. I never have. I come up with something I haven't done before, new approaches to chord sequences, riffs, rhythms, so it becomes composition. It's not like the music I'm doing is just a single thread.

There's never been any game plan or thread through my career. It's just happened that I've ricocheted from one interesting character to another.

It's a really nice way to cut your teeth, doing live shows. It's like going to the gym because you do have to think fast. You are constantly under the threat of people not laughing. Instead of getting hit, people could just not laugh, so you really are trying to mine quickly for the funniest thing you could say in that moment.

On 'There Will Be Blood,' I was cast at the last minute. I had 3 and a half to 4 days to get ready for the first day. I just went for it, threw myself in there and gave it everything I had. That was just guts and instinct, not a lot of preparation.

I just go into the studio, look at the lyrics for the first time when I put them on the piano, and go. If I haven't got it within 40 minutes, I give up. It's never changed, the thrill has never gone, because I don't know what I'm going to get next.

Once you're on, nobody can say, 'Cut it.' You're out there on your own, and there's always that thrill of a real live audience.

When I sit down to write a scene, I have a plan in mind, and I'm thrilled when a character disregards my goals and takes the story to a place I hadn't imagined.

I'm thrilled when I hear the greatest jazz musicians. They continue to search in ways other musicians do not.

It's thrilling to be onstage and to not know, literally, what the next moment is going to bring. To just submit to the not-knowing-ness of it.