I had to learn right away how to improvise behind Ornette, which not only meant following him from one key to another and recognizing the different keys, but modulating in a way that the keys flowed in and out of each other, and the new harmonies sounded right.

Charlie Haden

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A master of improvised speech and improvised policies.

It's funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it's fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.

Abel Ferrara

Funny UN Thing

If I improvise vocals at an early stage of the song, I just kind of listen to the roll, and then I kind of have a little vocal hook.

Adam Granduciel

Age Vocals Vocal

Well, you can't improvise story, which is a fact. If you could, the budget would be insane.

Adam Pally

You Would Which

Anytime I audition for something, it's always a question of whether or not the people I'm auditioning for understand I'm an improviser and I like to do that, and if they like that or if they just want someone who's going to do what's written.

Adam Pally

Time Written Who

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.

Adam Pally

Work Would Working Together

The way Apatow works, you do it scripted a couple times, and then he just kind of lets you go and improvise.

Adam Scott

Work Time You

I like to improvise; I think it's just a healthy thing to do, to keep everything loose and fun.

Adam Scott

Health Very Us

My roots are in classical music and jazz, and I want the freedom of being able to improvise. This freedom is possible only in a live concert.

Adnan Sami

Music Freedom Want

I've always been an improviser. I was one before I knew even what the word was... And acting, that I've been doing since I was 5.

Alan Arkin

Word Ways Way

Part of the mystique of shows like 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' is the idea that they begin with a couple of plot lines, and then a bunch of geniuses improvise dialogue. It's not quite that unstructured and loose. It makes for a good urban myth, but everything's a little more tightly scripted and programmed than that.

Alan Thicke

Good Art Your

Vince Vaughn is a master improviser.

Alan Tudyk

T Pro Master

The lifelong goal of an improviser is to listen to what the other person is saying, taking it in, and responding.

Ali Farahnakian

Life Yin Ten

Baseball players practice, runners practice, so how can you practice being funny? You get up onstage. You train as an improviser, playing make-believe, using the vernacular of improvisation, saying 'yes and' to other people's ideas, making statements.

Ali Farahnakian

Men Funny Age

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.

Allan Holdsworth

Time Ways Way

My music is written with one goal in mind: to improvise. It's like explaining a great story in words, but without words, much faster than you could with words. It's like a direct line of instantaneous communication where you don't have to wait for the end.

Allan Holdsworth

Music Great Communication

I knew if I wanted to improvise over chord changes, I'd have to figure out all the scales that went with all those chords.

Allan Holdsworth

Change Wit Wanted

Coming out of Dallas and doing commercial work in Dallas - if you had improv background in Dallas, then you were instantly shot to the top of the list of commercial bookings because they loved improvisers because you could elevate the material.

Allison Tolman

Work Love You

'Curb' is 100 percent improvised, which is wild. I'd never done anything like that.

Amy Landecker

Wild Which Thing

I also think if you're an actor and you can improvise, when you go on an audition and you can improvise you're just a genius. If you can, you know, take a Tide commercial and you can just say one funny line that's not in the commercial they think you're a genius.

Amy Poehler

Funny You Us

To those portions of the electorate fed up with politics as usual, Mr. Trump's willingness to say just about anything and to improvise as he goes seems more refreshing and trustworthy than disqualifying.

Anand Giridharadas

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.

Andy Daly

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.

Andy Daly

When I first moved to L.A., I didn't have a lot of money to join a gym or take classes, so I improvised. My sister and I went to the library and looked over their DVD collection and discovered Neena and Veena, these Egyptian twins who have a whole series of belly dancing routines. We did them all.

AnnaLynne McCord

Someone like my father will improvise as much as 90% of the music in concert, but with me it's maybe 10 to 20%. It's sort of the test of how great someone is, the more they can improvise correctly and still be true to the raga they're playing, and still keep it new and fresh the whole time.

Anoushka Shankar

I'm a jazz performer - I have to improvise with what I'm given.

Apollo Robbins

Do you remember a scene with Ryan and Ali playing in the snow? Well, that was improvised.

Arthur Hiller

President Karzai was an accidental president. There was no paradigm for the conditions he faced, because no one could have imagined 9/11. He had to improvise under very difficult conditions to hold this country together.

Ashraf Ghani

When you improvise, you work off the laughs from the audience, but when you step on stage to do standup, it's silent.

Aubrey Plaza

Sometimes we had to improvise. I hate to improvise because I felt like I couldn't find words.

Berenice Bejo

Government tends to stifle innovation, and it abhors improvisation. Any good military strategist will tell you that a battle plan rarely survives past the first engagement. After that, you have to improvise to survive and to win.

Betsy DeVos

The magic of playing has to do with how much everyone wants it to succeed. If you have five players in a situation where the music is being improvised and one is determined it is not going to succeed, it won't succeed even if one of the musicians takes control.

Bill Dixon

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.

Bille August

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?'

Billy Crystal

One of my favourite games as a child was to dress up and improvise. Acting seemed obvious.

Billy Howle

When I was coming up, a freestyle wasn't a freestyle unless everything was completely improvised, in-the-moment and right there, and you had to incorporate various elements of what was going on in the room on the day.

Black Thought

Sometimes the best thing you could do is a real bad film... you could improvise all over the place and probably only improve the script.

Bruce Glover

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.

Bryce Dessner

When I do an hour-and-a-half show, if I don't improvise 20 minutes worth of new material each night, I feel I've let myself down.

Buddy Hackett

'When Harry Met Sally' will endure. It will be the standard rom-com that others will improvise on for years to come.

Camille Perri

Learning how to improvise really awakened my interest in music.

Carter Burwell

On 'Sin Nombre,' Adriano Goldman and I improvised a lot of things on-site. We were working with untrained actors, and you can't really block a scene in a traditional way.

Cary Fukunaga

If you have a great script and great dialogue, you don't need to improvise.

Catherine O'Hara

I learned one thing from De Niro: He taught me to listen. Nobody says anything strictly from the script. It's improvised. It was the best piece of advice I have ever gotten in my life. It has helped me through the past thirty years.

Cathy Moriarty

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.

Chad Smith

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.

Charlie Haden

I think it's very important to live in the present. One of the great things that improvising teaches you is the magic of the moment that you're in because, when you improvise, you're in right now. You're not in yesterday or tomorrow - you're right in the moment.

Charlie Haden

I had to learn right away how to improvise behind Ornette, which not only meant following him from one key to another and recognizing the different keys, but modulating in a way that the keys flowed in and out of each other, and the new harmonies sounded right.

Charlie Haden

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.

Charlie Trotter

As a stand-up, as a storyteller, as an improviser, I've done thousands of shows. They allow me to work out new material that might turn into something later. They let me keep my muscles sharp for when the rent-paying gigs do come along. They keep me sane.

Chris Gethard