Quotes About Improvisation

I'm playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order

If you cannot get your act together then at least try to make it entertaining." Becky Johnson

He called it potentia because there's nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact you're making it up as you go along.

My father believes that everything is music," I said. "And when you pass on you become part of the tune." One improvisation amongst the millions and millions of melodies that create the symphony of everything. My dad basically believes that your life is your one chance at a solo—so it better be a good one. Mind you, he also thinks that Miles Davis was the Second Coming and most of the world's woes are due to humanity's failure to recognise him as such.

You can't die of jazz," said Dr. Walid. "Can you?" I thought of Fats Navarro, Billie Holiday, and Charlie Parker who, when he died, was mistaken by a coroner for a man twice his real age. "You know," I said, "I think you'll find you can." Jazz

Tolkien and my dad had weirdly convergent ideas about the musical nature of the universe, although my dad would probably have been more forgiving of Melkor's improvisation. You know, providing it didn't step on his solo.

People often ask me if it's scary to make up a song onstage, dictating parts, on the fly, to a full orchestra. Well, no. It doesn't occur to me to worry about that. I have a jazz musician's view of mistakes. If you play a wrong note, you can always make the same mistake again on purpose and make it sound right. Insistence on the mistake can be quite musical. Indeed, "once is a mistake, twice is jazz," a quote often attributed to Miles Davis.

I'd say, 'Trane, man, why are you doing that, beating on your chest and howling in the microphone?'" Ali remembered in an interview. "He'd say, 'Man, I can't find nothing else to play on the horn.' He exhausted the saxophone. He couldn't find nothing else to play … he ran out of horn.

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.

I can put together a pretty decent meal from whatever happens to be in the refrigerator and the pantry. I like the challenge of this sort of improvisation, the rigor of limitation and sometimes having to take a risk.

I've got a radio that occasionally I listen to. It's portable. It's got an antenna. I've put a piece of aluminum foil on it that gives me a little bit better reception. And a refrigerator.

I know of some guitar-based rock bands that refuse to record anything that they can't play live. But some of the best stuff I come up with are studio-based performances - bringing out whatever accident I had in the studio and building a song around that.

There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants.

When you perform in front of an audience after only two days of rehearsal, you're flying by the seat of your pants - particularly when they're rewriting the show right up to the moment the camera goes on.

I'm not one to dwell on rehearsal or preparation.

Good actors, especially when they know their character, will come in and either tell you in advance that they have an idea, or in the middle of the rehearsal or the scene they'll let it loose and you go, 'Ah that's great.'

I'm not a guy that loves a lot of rehearsal, but it depends.

You have to run, an awful lot, on instinct. Even on 'Veep,' it's not like you get weeks of rehearsal to break out what's going on in the scenes.

I think that no number of rehearsals can guarantee the outcome of a live show.

I think that sometimes in theater, I don't prepare much beyond going to the rehearsals.

Sometimes films have no rehearsals - you don't have real rehearsals on the set because the day is so dominated by the schedule.

I don't rehearse a lot. I try to keep it organic. Even in movies, the less I rehearse, the better I am.

I don't do a lot of rehearsal. I don't like rehearsals. I rehearse the day or morning. I spend one hour and a half with all the actors, and we go over the scenes, and we change it and change the dialogue, and we do a lot of things to it, but prior to shooting, I don't really rehearse.

I don't like a lot of rehearsing.