Quotes About Improvisation

I'm really getting to appreciate traditional jazz now - the New Orleans stuff - a lot more than I did before.

On 'Sin Nombre,' Adriano Goldman and I improvised a lot of things on-site. We were working with untrained actors, and you can't really block a scene in a traditional way.

The world is a slightly better place for having improvisation in it than it was before. There's something about it that says something positive about the human spirit, that a bunch of people can get together and by following a few simple traffic rules can create art and can entertain an audience and can thrill and exalt each other.

And I've made it a choice on my records that sometimes I leave the breath or the trailing note that sometimes falls into a flat or a sharp.

Rap is something you can just throw on the skillet and fry up real quick. That's how it comes to me, my train of thought. It's like getting dressed - I don't have to sit down and stare at clothes, I just pick what I like and put it on. But rock, you gotta put it in the oven and let it bake.

You're just sort of searching for this 'thing' and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. All music is imperfect, but in jazz since you're improvising, at least the way I play, I'm trying to follow my train of thought in a solo.

I took some lessons as a kid but trained myself by ear. I did it the way jazz musicians used to learn years ago, which is to play records and slow them down to figure out the notes. At first I tried to imitate Red Garland, who was my favorite jazz pianist.

I am neither a method actor nor a trained one. So, I don't generally prepare for any role. Becoming the character and being in that moment are most important.

It was actually quite easy to work with Uggie, because he's a really well trained dog. Very talented. I just had to follow him a little bit, improvise a little bit. Sometimes he'd follow me. Especially because of the sausages I had in my pocket.

I was trained in jazz, which I love.

I've never had formal drama-school training; I've just picked things up as I've gone along.

I never did improv professionally, but that was certainly in my training as an actor. I like it.

Jazz is a way of life, and you have to learn about it on the street, so to speak. But the training comes in by giving you the tools to work with.

I was training in an old garage - just a roof. And when its snowed, it would cover the floor, so I would have to clear this first. I didn't have a punch bag. There was no place to buy it, so I managed to get a speed ball, but it didn't have the swivel mechanism, so I just nailed it to the ceiling and started kicking.

Rock guitarists usually do not wish to think trains of thought about anything but their own guitar playing during a long solo, and I could not play this way if I were not able to divide my attention between my ever changing musical environment and my instrument itself.

When I play, I very quickly put myself into a light hypnotic trance and compose while playing, drawing directly from the emotions.

I usually have a sense of where my characters are personally and ways in which they might transform throughout the novel. But I never know at the outset how the book will end, nor do I ever stick to my original plan.

Sometimes I look up a recipe for chicken and tomatoes and end up cooking pork. The inspiration gets lost in translation.

At that time, Charlie Parker was trying to work up on something," recalled his friend Clarence Davis, "but he didn't know what he was doing. He was fishing, but nothing was biting.

There are more guys than girls in jazz. Next-to-no lady trumpeters (oh, there are a few) but it doesn't matter because, for me, jazz trumpet is all about one guy Miles Davis. He made this famous album in 1959 called Kind of Blue which is kind of, always, how I feel. That album gets into your bones goes and goes starts, hesitates, reaches out, feels for the music, the sound, the thing you want to change. Always grasping for the unattainable makes you kind of excited, kind of sorry.

his jest implies: "Anybody who wants to be a real musician must be able to set even a menu to music.

One way we can enliven the imagination is to push it toward the illogical. We're not scientists. We don't always have to make the logical, reasonable leap.

If you got the truth, you put it out there, and everybody says, "Oh, my God. That's me." And then they improvise also. They take off, as well.

Improvisation, if you play it at the top of your intelligence, leads to a kind of truth that people find really accessible.