Improvisation Quotes

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

Life is improvisation.

Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist; on a significant bases of reality, the imagination spins, weaving new patterns; a mixture of memories, experiences, free fancies, incongruities and improvisations.

Too much improvisation leaves the mind stupidly void.

Improvisation is a compositional method.

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.

Even if the script's well written there's something about the life of an improvisation that resonates better than a written word, sometimes.

Improvisation and new learning are not private processes; they are shared with others at every age. We are called to join in a dance whose steps must be learned along the way, so it is important to attend and respond. Even in uncertainty, we are responsible for our steps.

The improvisation had to be in public, because you only get value playing to strangers.

To work from nature is to improvise.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but that's what we face when we're dealing with improvisation.

if you don't think that all life is improvisation, then you haven't been paying attention. Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans.

The minute you make a mistake - that's improvisation!

Life is improvisation. All of those [improv] classes were like church to me. The training had seeped into me and changed who I am.

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

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

You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!

Improvisation is the art of becoming sound. It is the only art in which a human being can and must become the music he or she is making. Improvisation is the only musical art which predicated entirely on human trust and love.

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.

And in Improvisation there is one hard and fast rule, and that rule is known as "Yes And." The term YES AND: to say yes, and not just yes, but to add information. In the adding of information you don't negate the other persons idea - but you build on it.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.

Improvisation is the courage to move from one note to the next.

Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call.

Improvisation is the art of being completely O.K. with not knowing what the f— you’re doing

In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

Improvisation is too good to leave to chance.

I honestly would tell anyone young to start looking at stories and learning story, because I think that’s the next step after people go, ‘OK, I’ve had enough of that improvisation, I’ve had enough of those short comedy bits. Tell me a story, tell me a more complex story, something that lasts and maybe has a little more meaning to it.’ Don’t ever look at what’s happening now; look at what’s coming next.

I allow a lot of room for improvisation and funny stuff. I always feel planned.

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.

Music making features real-time creation, real-time decisions and actions. It's basically improvisation, which is the stuff of everyday life. In the realm of discourse about music, improvisation is marginal, but in the realm of doing it, it's omnipresent. Strange distinction here: we're improvising all the time, but when we tend to talk about music, we tend to talk about objects that are fixed, like recordings, scores, pieces.

Generally speaking I would say I enjoy the smaller films more because there's a less sense of pressure and often the material is more unusual. But in "Iron Man" it was kind of like both worlds colliding because there was a lot of improvisation, not that we improv-ed in the scenes but to discover the actual scenes themselves.

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

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.

Some people have this really clear memory of making that decision, and I don't. My earliest memories of being involved with drama or acting were in elementary school. My sister and I got dropped off at an after-school improvisation class, a time-killer for kids while parents were doing the groceries. I'm 6 years old, and I remember running amok and playing these games.

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

It's not like that because the improvisation makes it automatically democratic. No one's leading anything. I didn't have to worry about anyone feeling involved. It was just the most natural, easy process of making music.

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.

In 1968 I ran into Steve Lacy on the street in Rome. I took out my pocket tape recorder and asked him to describe in fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation. He answered: "In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds." His answer lasted exactly fifteen seconds.

When I create I don't think in technical or mathematical terms until the idea is formulated Musical composition is formulated in improvisation. Once a pianist like myself sits down and begins to play and start thinking about what I am writing all of a sudden a little tune will emerge, a little spot light and I'll go, "That's interesting."

Michael Ian Black wears many hats. He's a stand-up comedian, a comedic actor, he's now a writer-director so he knew how to work with all of us. And furthermore, because so much of his career is based on improvisation he gave us the freedom to do that as well.

Improvisation was the blood and bone of jazz, and in the classic, New Orleans jazz it was collective improvisation in which each performer, seemingly going his own melodic way, played in harmony, dissonance, or counterpoint with the improvisations of his colleagues. Quite unlike ragtime, which was written down in many cases by its composers and could be repeated note for note (if not expression for expression) by others, jazz was a performer's not a composer's art.

Music to me is spontaneous, writing is spontaneous and it's all based on not trying to do it. From beginning to end, whether it's writing a song, or playing guitar, or a particular chord sequence, or blowing a horn, it's based on improvisation and spontaneity.

In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There's no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others.

The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consonant and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only 'good guys' in it, or eating cottage cheese.

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

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.

I may be prejudiced, but I believe that jazz music has the strongest healing potential, and it's not just because I play it and love it so much. I feel that it's the improvisation in jazz that makes it so strong as a healing tool, what each individual gives to a tune from their heart and their soul when they take a solo. It's all spontaneous, and it's all love, and from the heart.

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

I try to influence this improvisation in two ways. One is by centering on reflections, in both senses of the word: acoustic reflections as well as visual reflections from a mirror or surface, and then reflecting on the material in a contemplative way. The other influence is listening to the tails of the sounds that you make.

Free improvisation, in addition to being a highly skilled musical craft, is open to use by almost anyone-beginners, children, and non-musicians. The skill and intellect required is whatever is available. Its accessibility to the performer is, in fact, something which appears to offend both its supporters and detractors....And as regards method, the improvisor employs the oldest in music-making...Mankind's first musical performance couldn't have been anything other than a free improvisation.