John Tesh Quotes

When I sit down to write a song, it's a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I'm about to do.

The reason I don't tour is that I don't know how to front a band. What would I do? I can't really play anything well enough to deal with that situation.

My writing process is very organic. I start with an idea. I have the general story arc and the cast. But then I sit down to write, and things change.

Once you've been on tour six, seven years, you get an idea of what works and what doesn't work universally. There will be some crowds that we just can't play a song, but we've got 90% of a show that we know is going to be a hit with the Lupe Fiasco fan. I think the catering has already been done.

When you play against different people from all walks of life you can't do the same thing against every player defensively or offensively. You have to change up the way you go at a player.

Vince or Brad or Benicio would say, Maybe we should try this, and Guy was open to changes.

Memorizing a playbook is like memorizing a script. When they change the script at the last minute it's like changing a play in a game.

So you can have your program, but you also have to be ready to change it immediately because there are certain kinds of people who like certain kinds of songs and they like - some people want to dance when you come out, some people just want to be intimate with you. So you kind of feel your way through a show.

I film quite a bit of footage, then edit. Changes before your eyes, things you can do and things you can't. My attitude is always 'let it keep rolling.'

I like talking about comic book process, and one of the things is that I have plans going ahead for years, and the plans constantly get thrown away and shifted. There's a difference between planning and what actually happens in life, and comics have a life of their own.

You can't start a movie by having the attitude that the script is finished, because if you think the script is finished, your movie is finished before the first day of shooting.

Set lists are tough because you come up with this structure of how the songs are going to go from one to the next, but at the same time, you have to be spontaneous and take requests and change the set list at the drop of a hat.

Sometimes if you get 'em too drunk they don't pay no attention to what you're doin' anyways, so you might as well just do old songs. But if you get one that's paying attention, sometimes we'll do some new material.

When you make new musicals, you have the great freedom and the great burden that it can be changed.

We would play songs live on stage, and then we'd watch their reaction we were receiving immediately, if people were dancing and singing along. If they weren't, then we'd go into the dressing rooms of the different NBA teams that we were playing in their arenas, and we'd change the songs right there.

I never see songs as permanent. I'm always in a state of revising everything.

I just kind of change, constantly, what my focus is. So whatever is stimulating me or inspiring me at the time is what I focus on.

I tend to arrive in the rehearsal process with very strongly developed ideas about what I want to do. But I don't like those ideas to be things that are not subject to change, or subject to development, or subject to challenge.

With 'Human Giant,' we tested almost everything live and made tweaks based on what worked and what didn't.

We're not one of those bands that throws the names of all their songs in a hat and pulls them out right before they go on stage.

You've gotta leave enough space for your actors to bring stuff to the table and whatever the weather's doing that day or what the light's like. Things can shift, and you have to be malleable. Every day is a different feeling and a change.

A band requires so much rehearsal and travel logistics. I didn't mind it when I was younger, but there's not much motivation for me to do it now.

The real writing of a piece comes only when you are performing it. It is why I like theatre. In film and TV, the image is locked forever, but in theatre, there is constant change; each performance is part of the writing process.

The nice thing about the theatre is you can always change it. With a movie, once it's there, you're stuck with it.

There are times when a film turns out differently from how it was narrated. But I don't look at it as a bad thing.