#improvisation

I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground. ↗

— John McLaughlin

#common #common ground #degree #develops #find

Improvisation is almost like the retarded cousin in the comedy world. We've been trying forever to get improvisation on TV. It's just like stand-up. It's best when it's just left alone. It doesn't translate always on TV. It's best live. ↗

— Amy Poehler

#alone #always #been #best #comedy

Perfect retention. I don't think I could do that-I've never disciplined myself to do it.I suppose a lot of it is a question of discipline. Which improvisation is not. ↗

— George Shearing

#discipline #disciplined #i #improvisation #lot

I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life. ↗

— Amy Tan

#also #completely #did #fiction #first

The problem that I have is with the music business. For some reason it seems almost impossible to get anything, any music, released which includes improvisation or soloing. ↗

— Jan Hammer

#any #anything #business #get #i

My act is sort of improvisational. I have a skeleton in my head, but no fat or skin on it. ↗

— Paula Poundstone

#fat #head #i #improvisational #skeleton

When we got to the part where we had to improvise an argument in a poetic language, I got cold feet. "I can't do this," I said. "I don't know what to say." "Say anything," he said. "You can't make a mistake when you improvise." "What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?" "You can't," he said. "It's like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another." In this simple exchange, Sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that I have accessed my whole life. ↗

— Patti Smith

#playwriting #sam-shepard #life

There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation. ↗

— David Antin

#improvisation #jazz #just #procedures #talks

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation. ↗

— Jan Garbarek

#i #improvisation #jazz #keep #only

Mockingbirds are the true artists of the bird kingdom. Which is to say, although they're born with a song of their own, an innate riff that happens to be one of the most versatile of all ornithological expressions, mocking birds aren't content to merely play the hand that is dealt them. Like all artists, they are out to rearrange reality. Innovative, willful, daring, not bound by the rules to which others may blindly adhere, the mockingbird collects snatches of birdsong from this tree and that field, appropriates them, places them in new and unexpected contexts, recreates the world from the world. For example, a mockingbird in South Carolina was heard to blend the songs of thirty-two different kinds of birds into a ten-minute performance, a virtuoso display that serve no practical purpose, falling, therefore, into the realm of pure art. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#artists #improvisation #mocking-birds #music #art