Quotes About Improvisation

Sometimes I play something, and I haven't recorded it, and I don't know where it came from, why my hands did what they did, what key it was in, anything.

I just keep recording. You never know what you'll come up with.

I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz.

Each one of us had a little story to tell and each recording was based on that. Lou played all of the music but we both sort of kicked around some cords during the writing phase.

When you're on the road, you've got to have your four-track - or some kind of recording device to jam on and have a good time.

When I'm recording, I usually just mumble and hum a melody and then fill the words in as I go.

I remember the first time hearing a recording from Minton's Playhouse; it was Charlie Christian and a young Dizzy Gillespie, and he was just the best musician in the room.

I never had lessons. Used to try to play to records, which I hated doing. Still can't play to them.

With Dollars And Cents on the album, we had it as a band jam and I sometimes spend evenings playing with records over the top of things we were working on to see what works.

They don't bother too much with the balance and things on blues records.

It's never about the screwup - it's always about the recovery. That's the thing about it... if it comes out a little rare you call it carpaccio. It comes out a little overcooked, you shred it up and put in on a sandwich.

In films, there is no scope to rectify any mistake... but in theatre, you can rectify it the next day.

My friend and I were in a band together and we used to always refer it it as 'floor-core,' meaning that we would sit on the floor and play stuff.

It's fun to deliver material on live TV because it's more off-the-cuff, but I like writing better. You really can measure the joke, think an extra second and nail the right reference.

I tend not to have any references to anything. I just jump into the script in front of me. If you reference too much, you have no idea if the performances are right.

You know, I just tend to do the scene that I'm given, really. If it really needs it, then I'll go to them and ask 'What's she talking about? What's she referring to?' But often they don't know, or they do know and they're not going to tell me, so I've learned just to work with what I'm given.

I'm great at telling stories with the kids. I do all my different accents. We make our own stories up all the time, the four of us, me and Hannah and the kids.

After the first ball is bowled, it's only chaos. What you are trying to do is you're trying to manage the chaos. It's not like a script that happens.

Some of the routines come back very easily. We do it off the top of our heads.

When you have a guest role, it's like being dropped into a show out of a helicopter.

I just Google whatever the hell I want to cook, and I try to cook it by what they tell me to do. If it's not good, I don't eat it.

I don't even think whether I play the blues or not, I just play whatever feels right at the moment. I also will use any gadget or device that I find that helps me achieve the sort of sound on the guitar that I want to get.

Bob Hope was totally regimented. I go in and say a line like, 'Hi Bob' and I'd have to do it five times, and then Bob would take me to the writers to say the line different ways. He wouldn't let me ad-lib.

When I don't know all the rules, I just break them all. And it becomes like a higher level of music because of that.