Improvising Quotes - Page 2

• Jazz music should be inclusive. Smooth jazz to me rules out a certain kind of drama and a certain tension that I think all music needs. Especially jazz music, since improvising is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. And when you smooth it out, you take all the drama out of it.

  David Sanborn

  Drama, Thinking, Smooth Jazz

  "Once-stricken saxman: Music 'gave me my life'". Interview with Shanon Cook, www.cnn.com. August 15, 2008.

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• I know there are some actors who are just brilliant at improvising and brilliant at just being in the moment and doing it there and then. I'm not one of those actors.

  Ioan Gruffudd

  Actors, Just Being, Brilliant

  "Ioan Gruffudd - Exclusive Collider Interview". Interview with Steve "Frosty" Weintraub, collider.com. November 13, 2007.

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• If the same phrase in the same place created the right effect, I was perfectly prepared to use it every time. I wasn't worried that I wasn't improvising.

  Alexis Korner

  Phrases, Use, Worried

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• Even if you're improvising, the fact that beforehand you know certain things will work helps you make those improvisations successful. It really helps to have a certain amount of knowledge about musical structure.

  John Cale

  Successful, Musical, Facts

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• I enjoy songwriting. It's slow-motion improvising.

  Julian Casablancas

  Slow Motion, Enjoy, Songwriting

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• Jazz vision is the fusion of music and art a real paradox of same-yet different. Here we play in exchanges, like the hardness of the key of c# major and from the softness of Db major - capturing, reflecting and improvising.

  Barbara Januszkiewicz

  Art, Real, Keys

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• We do not need to understand other people and their customs fully to interact with them and learn in the process; it is making the effort to interact without knowing all the rules, improvising certain situations, which allows us to grow.

  Mary Catherine Bateson

  Knowing, People, Effort

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• Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.

  Billy Crystal

  Book, School, Play

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• There are certain actors who are very good at improvising, like Dustin Hoffman and Glenda Jackson.

  John Schlesinger

  Actors, Certain, Very Good

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• In life, sometimes everything falls into place, and sometimes everything just falls to pieces. The key is to begin creating with these fallen pieces. By improvising, you'll create something magical that might be the best thing you've ever accomplished

  Tori Amos

  Fall, Creating, Keys

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• Those are the rules. To improvise in a movie with other people, when they're following a script, everybody has to know what's going on. I think a line or two we might change. Certainly, I do. But I wouldn't call it improvising. I'd call it fudging the lines.

  Samuel L. Jackson

  Thinking, Two, People

  "‘The Man’ Interviews: Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy". www.hollywood.com.

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• There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Believe, Second Chance, Violin

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• My solo music - I get up onstage, I improvise and it's my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we're improvising together. Then it's not my music; it's our music.

  John Zorn

  Together, Get Up, Solo

  "Interview hits dissonant chord with John Zorn" by Lee Hildebrand, www.sfgate.com. August 26, 2010.

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• Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape.

  Gary Burton

  Music, Landscape, Jazz

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• I remember as a kid, I was improvising and making little trophies out of different materials and going in front of the mirror, lifting the trophies and saying 'Nole was the champion!'

  Novak Djokovic

  Kids, Mirrors, Tennis

  "Visualizing greatness: How Novak Djokovic rose to the top" by Matthew Knight, edition.cnn.com. January 28, 2013.

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• There's a difference between ad-libbing and improvising. And there's a difference between not knowing what to do and just saying something. Or making choices as an actor. As a writer also, as a person who's making a film, as a cameraman, everything is a choice. And it seems to me I don't really have to direct anyone or write down that somebody's getting drunk; all I have to do is say that there's a bottle there and put a bottle there and then they're going to get drunk.

  John Cassavetes

  Writing, Differences, Knowing

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I wouldn't want the pressure of a Six Feet Under or the pressure of improvising like Curb Your Enthusiasm.

  Robert Englund

  Feet, Want, Enthusiasm

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• When I worked with Robin Williams, now there is improv! He is just as funny as you think he is. We did at least five or six takes of every scene, improvising every scene differently. He was a riot.

  Stephen Root

  Thinking, Robins, Six

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• I was always playing the Hammond Organ back to front even during the days of the Nice, going back to 1968. Really what I was doing there, was choosing notes at random and trying to make some sense of them, improvising back to front.

  Keith Emerson

  Nice, Trying, Notes

  "Readers recommend: songs featuring the organ" by Peter Kimpton, www.theguardian.com. October 29, 2015.

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• Competence means keeping your head in a crisis, sticking with a task even when it seems hopeless, and improvising good solutions to tough problems when every second counts. It encompasses ingenuity, determination and being prepared for anything.

  Chris Hadfield

  Determination, Mean, Tasks

  Chris Hadfield (2013). “An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth”, p.28, Pan Macmillan

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• I don't mind doing scripted material. It's actually kind of a relief, because improvising is a little bit like screenwriting on your feet.

  John C. Reilly

  Feet, Mind, Relief

  "Interview: John C. Reilly talks Cyrus, torrid romance, and musicals". Interview with Christine Champ, www.mtv.com. June 29, 2010.

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• ...I think of improvising as composing - fo me it's all about playing melodies. When I improvise, there's not a lot of real thinking going on, per se - it's more like riding a wave. and I know how to stand on the board

  Robben Ford

  Music, Real, Thinking

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• I anticipated all the changes in jazz because they were all problematical things, that I was dealing with myself. In New York in the late '50s, there were a lot of experiments being made on how to avoid playing popular standards and how to get improvising out of those constricting formats.

  Paul Bley

  Music, New York, Jazz

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• The Beatles came and everybody forgot about everything else. That was a friendly, together, hip interpersonal music, introducing electric sustain, and it captured the imagination of everybody. So improvising, even though it was in a very rich period in terms of impact on the public, the '6Os were very hard times on players financially.

  Paul Bley

  Music, Hard Times, Player

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• Improvising things is always changing. A lot of momentum.

  Ikue Mori

  Momentum

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