Quotes About Improvisation

When we had to do book reports, I would pick a book that no one read and just make it up and turn that in. I got praised for my imagination.

life itself was an improvisation in which I was going to have to deal with what came to me and not think about what should have come.

Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another theme, incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion.

That's what we're all doing, all the time, whether we know it or not. Whether we like it or not. Creating something on the spur of the moment with the materials at hand. We might just as well let the res tof it go, join the party, and dance our hearts out.

The thing with film and theater is that you always know the story so you can play certain cues in each scene with the knowledge that you know where the story's going to end and how it's going to go. But on television nobody knows what's going to happen, even the writers.

This work is, as I said, improvisation, so we use whoever's around, if we can trust them.

A church which pitches its tents without constantly looking out for new horizons, which does not continually strike camp, is being untrue to its calling. . . . [We must] play down our longing for certainty, accept what is risky, and live by improvisation and experiment. Hans Küng, The Church as the People of God

Peter Sellers constantly reinvented himself.

In the States, this type of jam-band phenomena has opened it up for groups to improvise, admittedly more in the groove area, as opposed to the straight-ahead jazz thing - which is good for me, as that's one part of where I'm at. It's been so great playing these gigs and seeing kids come out and the whole college scene.

Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.

Phish is such a good band; they just make stuff up as a jam band.

When I started performing, there was no Internet; I didn't really have anything to copy. I kind of had to just make up what I thought burlesque was, based on photographs of Sally Rand or whatever.

I just make up lyrics off the top of my head. A lot of times, there's a phrase I really like, and I kind of build the song around that.

I'll hear a phrase around me that someone says... I'll write it down in my notebook, and as soon as I'll sit down with my guitar, I'll come up with the rest of the arrangement there.

Mentally and physically, I find I can play with these people.

Sheets of sound. Well, that was when I got tired of certain modulations. Like when you want to get back to C, and you've got to go to D and then G and then C. I was fooling around with the piano, and I figured out some other way to do it.

Eliminating the piano means that I've always worked closer with the bass than most players.

I might have a guitar or a piano on set to play something for the actors.

I sit down and create atmospheres, start playing guitar or piano and just sing whatever comes out of my mouth.

I always start with emotion. That's where I start all of my improvisations, on the piano. I always start with the mood or the feel of where I am in that moment.

When I was a kid, we had acoustic guitars, a piano in the house. I made a drum kit out of buckets in my garage.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes I feel like playing 'Hospital'. Sometimes I feel like playing 'Pablo Picasso'. I've been playing a lot lately. I do it as long as I feel like it.

You just pick up a chord, go twang, and you're got music.

Truth be told, I think jazz is a mind-set. It's not necessarily, like, this guy picked up a horn and did this or whatever.