Improvising quotes:

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Improvising things is always changing. A lot of momentum. -- Ikue Mori
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. -- Christopher Walken
Certainly one of the more common experiences in the jazz field is discovering someone new. Improvising musicians are capable of being musical travelers, voyagers. We want to join in on whatever we hear. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape. -- Gary Burton
Improvising political dialogue is not easy. -- James Nesbitt
Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape. -- Gary Burton
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. -- Ed Helms
I don't think there's an improvised word in the movie. I hope not because I admire writing. Improvising is kind of gambling. It's just that you're standing up. -- Bill Nighy
I enjoy songwriting. It's slow-motion improvising. -- Julian Casablancas
Boxing is a lot of preparation and then improvising, so there are parallels to being an actor. -- Seth Numrich
No, improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing. -- Christopher Walken
Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising. -- Billy Crystal
Every day, you have to make three hours of music, just randomly improvising, and that's a great way to weed stuff out. -- Caroline Shaw
I love being onstage. I love the relationship with the audience. I love the letting go, the sense of discovery, the improvising. -- Stephen Colbert
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
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
My younger brother and I have been writing together, mainly for fun, for years, but we've been improvising together since we were kids. Literally. -- Ty Burrell
While you're improvising, you may come up with something which will break him up. As soon as that smile comes out, you know that, hey, we're having fun. -- Shelley Berman
I was improvising before I was reading music. I was just trying to play things on the clarinet by ear. I think my ear is one of my greatest assets. -- Pete Fountain
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
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
But one of the things I learned from improvising is that all of life is an improvisation, whether you like it or not. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century came out of people dropping things. -- Alan Arkin
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
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
You're just sort of searching for this 'thing' and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. All music is imperfect, but in jazz since you're improvising, at least the way I play, I'm trying to follow my train of thought in a solo. -- John Abercrombie
The Chili Peppers do a lot of improvising, but it's within the framework of song structures. The Meatbats is from a purely instrumental standpoint. But when you hear the term 'instrumental music' you think it's real serious stuff and everybody's playing a million notes and it's about playing fast. That's not what we do. -- Chad Smith
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
The trouble with the jokes is that once they're written, I know how they're supposed to work, and all I can do is not hit them. I'm more comfortable improvising. If I have just two or three ideas and I know how the character feels, what the character wants, everything in between is like trapeze work. -- Stephen Colbert
I look at improvising as a prolonged game of chess. There's an opening gambit with your pawn in a complex game I have with one character, and lots of side games with other characters, and another game with myself - and in each game you make all these tiny, tiny moves that get you to the endgame. -- Steve Carell
When we were doing 'Freaks and Geeks', I didn't quite understand how movies and TV worked, and I would improvise even if the camera wasn't on me. I thought I was helping the other actors by keeping them on their toes, but nobody appreciated it when I would trip them up. So I was improvising a little bit back then, but not in a productive way. -- James Franco
I'm by no means a pianist. I think that's safe to say, but the piano, for me, I would say it's the enabler. It gave me what I needed and gives me what I need in order to write a song. And I think playing or improvising on the piano is where I feel most liberated and sort of less conscious of all my insecurities or inadequacies. -- Laura Mvula
I do a lot of improvising on movies, actually. -- John C. Reilly
Yeah, improvising only really works 100% when you're with somebody. -- Bill Hader
There's something very edgy about Bill Murray out there improvising. -- Harold Ramis
When you're improvising, you're relying on this connection to creativity. -- Reggie Watts
Ah, you coward! Look at you, running." "Actually, it's called improvising. -- Jonathan Stroud
If you're too hung up on improvising 'correctly', you will almost always fail. -- Craig Cackowski
Symphony musicians are not trained in improvising, certainly not in a jazz style. -- Gunther Schuller
A person improvising is sometimes very fortunate that just at that second things coincide. -- Leo Ornstein
I'm improvising all the time. Everything I do is improvised. On the piano, at least. -- Mose Allison
My favorite dish is cleaning out the fridge on Sunday night and improvising a great medley. -- Matthew McConaughey
That's what improvising is like for me. There's no tollbooth between my impulse and my action. -- Twyla Tharp
There are certain actors who are very good at improvising, like Dustin Hoffman and Glenda Jackson. -- John Schlesinger
I've always loved improvising. That's how I write songs. Creativity has an improvised element to it. -- Jamie Lidell
Normally when I'm writing, in the beginning I don't think of lyrics at all. I'm just improvising. -- St. Lucia
Yes, for me audio-visual performance has its roots in my experience working as an improvising musician and composer. -- Kurt Ralske
Growing up playing jazz and improvising has had a big impact on me, and it translates into my music. -- Stephen Bruner
I wouldn't want the pressure of a Six Feet Under or the pressure of improvising like Curb Your Enthusiasm. -- Robert Englund
When I'm at the piano, and I'm improvising some song about something, it usually oscillates between factual, absurd, and sincere. -- Reggie Watts
I love food and am very good at improvising when preparing it - it's a really creative experience for me. -- Autumn Reeser
Shamanic healing is a journey. It involves stepping out of our habitual roles, our conventional scripts, and improvising a dancing path. -- Gabrielle Roth
A lot of lines in movies were written, but I'm always improvising. Once you get into the scene, it just comes to me. -- Chris Tucker
As an improvising musician, I am not in the music business, I am not in the creativity business; I am in the surrender business. -- Stephen Nachmanovitch
I can't imagine doing anything without being an improviser. I can't imagine trying to write or act or direct without what improvising offers you. -- Marc Evan Jackson
When I joined the band I was coming largely from an improvising background, and the idea of a fluid rhythm that was really coherent attracted me. -- John Dieterich
When you're improvising, it's fun to find something that you can lean on that is similar to your life experience. In my opinion, that's very helpful. -- Mark Duplass
I write and rewrite and memorize, and then inject my performance with improvising and spontaneity, because if something feels too rehearsed, it's not going to be fun. -- Andy Daly
The planet isn't improvising, it's creating dynamic tensions between complex living systems in a planetary choreography, a balancing act between physical, chemical, biological, environmental, and human components. -- DJ Spooky
I knew I was going to be composing. It all makes sense in retrospect. But you don't know while you're in the process of improvising your life. -- William Bolcom
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
If you do improvising, it can sometimes end up being a waste of time. And if you do that, it's more or less based on a writing process. -- Giovanni Ribisi
You will find hardly any improvising on camera anywhere in my films. It's very structured, but it's all worked out from elaborate improvisations over a long period, as you know. -- Mike Leigh
When we were making Speaking in Tongues and Remain in Light, we were jamming. From that we were taking the best bits and then recording and improvising on top of those. -- Tina Weymouth
If you're onstage and you're improvising and nothing's happening, people are racing for the door. But the director can go shopping later and pick up pieces and moments and insert them. -- Gary Cole
I found the recording sessions very freeing because you can really try things. When you're filming something, if you're improvising a film and you're wasting film and wasting a cameraman's time. -- Tina Fey
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
In many ways, I think it's easier in some ways, or it's more entertaining or more guaranteed to be entertaining than traditional improvising. Again, because you're not just you in your body. -- Brian Henson
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
Everybody improvises without noticing it. Life is about improvising. You can't control what happens in your life, I mean, you don't know what can happen in your life today. So you somehow improvise. -- Hiromi
The challenge is, well, there's a huge challenge, which is when you're improvising, you're meant to sort of clear your mind completely, just be open and funny, and paying, you know, paying attention. -- Brian Henson

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