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Improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing. That's a kind of paradoxical thing about improvising.
When we first started playing we did a lot of rehearsing. We used to write out everything. In fact, that's the way everybody rehearses: we play the tunes and improvise.
I love playing jazz because I love the freedom you have to improvise. It has given me a feeling in my classical repertoire of creating the atmosphere of the here and now.
We must improvise, and we must experiment, and we must do things that might go wrong, and everything we bring - the people and the equipment - must serve us in that goal.
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
If you give me a bass guitar and you ask me to improvise something, or even be with some musicians and follow them, I wouldn't be able to do it. And I want to change that.
With 'The Soup,' obviously it has to be totally scripted out, and then, within that, I improvise punchlines and sometimes setups if I can't read the teleprompter properly.
We play melodic music, we play songs, we play all kinds of things and when you improvise you don't just shut out different languages, you use all the languages that you have.
With Altman, he does discuss everything with you, but then leaves you to it and gives you full rein and lets you improvise and create a character while the camera is rolling.
A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef, once you have that basis, that's when cuisine is truly exciting.
The great majority of people are calm, resourceful, altruistic or even beyond altruistic, as they risk themselves for others. We improvise the conditions of survival beautifully.
I'm very open and never write what I'm going to say. Speeches bore everybody else. I have to freestyle. Every time, from one program to another, everything changes and I improvise.
Jazz is something that's constantly changing. Its sole purpose is to let people improvise, to let them solo differently each time they play. And that's always been what I like best.
That's the beauty of music. You can take a theme from a Bach sacred chorale and improvise. It doesn't make any difference where the theme comes from; the treatment of it can be jazz.
Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.
We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians.
But I really like hosting, I think it's a strength of mine. It allows me to improvise, and I love the spontaneity of that, and I think I'm funny behind the desk when interviewing someone.
Confident people, who understand comedy, improvise so much better than people who are scared. You can't be scared to improvise. You have to know your character, and then you have to let go.
I can't just play in a rock band. The National is a great, exciting band to play in. We improvise a lot onstage, and it's very intense, but after a while, I crave other kinds of experiences.
Every now and then, they ask me to come in and improvise with Stanley Tucci for an afternoon. They fly me off to America, I improvise for an afternoon - it's not the hardest, most taxing job.
I've not gotten so much stuff because I improvise in an audition, but I always feel like, if that's the case, the reason is because it wouldn't have worked out anyway with us working together.
I would always say I can sing, but I'm musical. I'm very good at following instructions, reading the music, and singing as it's written down, but there was a challenge when I had to improvise.
Most people learn to improvise on their own, listening to records, endless hours of noodling on their instrument in the bedroom with all their spare time. That's traditionally how people learn.
It comes down to the difference between what you were planning to do and what life throws at you and you have to end up doing. The one who knows how to improvise is the one who comes out ahead.
After you've practiced for an hour or so, turn down the lights and record yourself playing. Improvise and go nuts, then playback what you've recorded and listen for your strengths and weaknesses.
I would love to do more acting; I really would love to do it, particularly character acting. I'm a character type of actor; I love situations where I've got a bit of room to improvise on the character.
I wrote my book 'The Amorous Busboy Of Decatur Avenue' completely like a writer does, writing it down, re-writing everything. But in my stand-up, I improvise initially, never questioning it too closely.
I have never been to an acting school, and on the sets of 'Karwaan,' Irrfan was my acting school. By observing him, I learnt to improvise in the scenes along with focusing on the smallest of the details.
Usually I like to improvise. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the piece, I like to improvise because I think it brings certain freshness and a reality to it, as long as it doesn't go too far out of the box.
I don't write shows with dialogue where actors have to memorize dialogue. I write the scenes where we know everything that's going to happen. There's an outline of about seven or eight pages, and then we improvise it.
With 'True Grit,' the language was very specific, as is Shakespeare. You couldn't really improvise, nor would you really ever have to. I never felt the need to. It was all so beautifully written, and it was all right there.
It was pretty radical to go from the Eagles to being the only melodic instrument. You have to play a certain way. It's like the Who. It was a great kick in the pants for me to get my chops up and to improvise a little more.
Now I know Hindi, and I can read and write Hindi, but the problem is that I can't improvise when I am acting because I think in English, so I have to translate my thinking from English to Hindi, and therefore, I speak slowly.
Always when I write my music, I take my guitar, and I improvise always with a melody, you know, lyrics in Spanish. But sometimes I use some words in English. I don't know why. Maybe because I listen to a lot of music in English.
My father was Mickey Katz, who worked with Spike Jones and then went on to improvise some successful Yiddish parodies, some of which I perform. My favorite was 'Geshray of the Vilde Kotchke,' his version of 'Cry of the Wild Goose.'
The first feature film I did, when I did 'Night Shift,' I improvised quite a bit because I would improvise at the audition, so sometimes I would return to the original lines, and then when I was on set, I would improvise even more.
I could always improvise. Some of my teachers remember me standing in front of the class with a flower on my head, talking about photosynthesis. I'd stop and say, 'Is this working for any of you?' The kids were like, 'What is he doing?'
See, that's the thing: I'm not one of those actors who thinks, 'God, I've got to improvise and make it my own.' No, my first job as an actor is to take what's written and make it work. And then, if they want me to improvise, I'll do that.
I spent a lot of time in Chicago at a place called The Annoyance Theater, where we would develop one-act plays through improv, and you would just improvise scenes and then discover something about the character and use it in the next scene.
When I graduated from college, I moved to New York and started doing improv because I read all about the early 'Saturday Night Live' guys having come through Second City and learning how to improvise, so I wanted to get immediately into that.
I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.
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.
When we improvise freely - that is, without a structure - it tends to sound more like 20th century classical music, more like a classical ensemble improvising, as opposed to a free-jazz group, where you're more used to hearing saxophones honking.
My character has to be alive. It can't be a mere prop, and it has to have a life of its own. I need to have that space to play around and the scope to interact with the people around me. That freedom would give me a lot of margin to improvise with.
If I do a bit on stage, I prepare too much. Those bits are all really, really carefully written, and overwritten, and researched. I really don't feel like I can wing it. So I write it out word for word, and when I'm onstage I'll improvise around it.
Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something. And I think it's a way of - for me, it's a way of trying to understand the city, and what might happen in the city.
The big difference is the size of the crew and the flexibility of shooting because of the size. I mean, it's crazy. So you can't improvise, you cannot suddenly do something that comes to mind, whereas in a small production you have much more flexibility.
My friends, we all improvise together usually. So we write what I think is a good script but always leave a lot of room to find stuff on the day; and we always do find something. That's the advantage to having actors who are, in their own right, writers.
I've always done theater. I've never thought of myself as a comedic actress in any way. 'Anchorman' kind of cracked that open. When I got a small part in 'Anchorman,' I didn't know it was possible on camera to improvise. So I was like, 'What's happening?'
I don't play the traditional Charlie Parker songs. But I do improvise and I do create with my instrument, and that to me is jazz. But there are people who use the word 'jazz' only in a traditional sense, and they would be offended by that, and that's fine.