Improvisation Quotes

Jazz Improvisation means that practice is not as straightforward as it would be when you simply have a score to play.

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I'm blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

Free improvisation, in addition to being a highly skilled musical craft, is open to use by almost anyone - beginners, children, and non-musicians.

To work from nature is to improvise.

There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.

Improvisation in the jazz sense - like the business sense - is not formless. It is built on a skill set. Jazz, for example, involves selecting a tune.

When you want to have entertainment, it must be a waste of time. I don't like that. I don't like improvisation being pointless.

Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity.

Acting is really scary, but it's also challenging, fun, hard work. There's always an element of improvisation with every actor, even when something is really scripted.

I continued studying by myself in the field of jazz with my own technique of improvisation, walking bass lines, rhythms, all kinds of stuff, which I created for myself.

I like films that are well-written and concise and with not a lot of room for improvisation.

Peace demands more, not less, from a people. Peace lacks the clarity of purpose and the cadence of war. War is scripted: peace is improvisation.

I think that music, or at least the kind of music that I make, benefits greatly from improvisation.

Too much improvisation leaves the mind stupidly void.

I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation.

Bob Dylan's one of the greatest blues singers of the western world; ancient art, on-the-spot improvisation, mind quickness, endless variation, classical formulae, prophetic vision, mighty wind-horse.

Much of what happens in Love Always is really from overheard conversations in the Russian Tea Room. It's an improvisation of the way certain Hollywood agents think and talk to each other.

If anybody is a master at improvisation, it would be Ken Jeong. He is hilarious.

The score must govern the music. It must have authority, and not merely be an arbitrary jumping-off point for improvisation.

Everything we design and make is an improvisation, a lash-up, something inept and provisional.

Improvisation is about finding the best joke or the silliest way to get something across. Improvising conflict is always fun because you can just go for it.

I like to think that we've got a plan, so let's stick to it. That said, once we've stuck to it, we're allowed as much improvisation as anyone cares to indulge themselves in.

It's an improvisation on a theme. You know where you want to go, but you don't know how to get there. It's not linear.

You've got to have fun playing. It bothers me when players don't seem to be enjoying themselves, even when they play an incredible improvisation.

Life is improvisation.

Difficult for actors to extemporise in nineteenth-century English. Except for Robert Hardy and Elizabeth Spriggs, who speak that way anyway.

I'm very bad with improvisation. I hate it.

I like messing up the song, doing some improvisation. And I like running around the room with the mic.

Composition is frozen improvisation.

Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies.

...a disgruntled reflection on my own life as a sort of desperate improvisation in which I was constantly trying to make something coherent from conflicting elements to fit rapidly changing settings.

Most of my favourite moments in film have been when I've had an opportunity to say something from scratch, something original, whether I jotted down a few lines or it came out in improvisation.

The music of the Gypsies belongs in the sphere of improvisation rather than in any other, without which it would have no power to exist.

I've never been a big fan of improvisation, because I think you appreciate the process and the cleverness of it more than the actual comedy in most cases.

You know, when cameras are rolling, improvisation doesn't feel natural. The pressure is too great. You're on a time schedule. You've got 60 crewmen.

[on his use of tracking shots throughout his 50-year career] There's always a certain amount of camera improvisation.

The problem with improvisation is, of course, that everyone just slips into their comfort zone and does sort of the easy thing to do, the most obvious thing to do with your instrument.

With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive.

I started improvisation at age nine, and I loved it so much I stuck with it. As a by-product, acting was just something I was lucky enough to fall into.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

I think improvisation is really crucial in terms of making things feel real and authentic.

It ain't about if he knocks a guy out. It's about how he knocks a guy out. It's the style, the improvisation.

I think I'm going to venture into the futuristic, semi sci-fi love story land, but still in my style of improvisation.

Most of us lead lives of chaotic improvisation from day to day, bawling for peace while plunging grimly into fresh disorders.

Louis Armstrong is the master of the jazz solo. He became the beacon, the light in the tower, that helped the rest of us navigate the tricky waters of jazz improvisation.

I really enjoyed working on 'Dumb & Dumberer' with Cheri Oteri, maybe because we are both into improvisations. We were meant to act together.

Anything I do, I learn about first. I am not in favour of improvisation; I believe in work and in learning

The most unendurable thing, to be sure, the really terrible thing, would be a life without habits, a life which continually required improvisation.

What an actor says is much, much less important than a life, so that's the great use for improvisation; you go, you find the life and then you add the words.

In a society like ours, politics is improvisation. To the artful dodger rather than the true believer goes the prize.