Liz Phair Quotes

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.

I like to improvise.

I wish to God I was organized enough to tell you that, 'Yes, there will be 14 books, and this one will go here, and that one will go there'... but to be honest, I hardly know what I'm going to do when I get up in the morning.

We really never know what we're gonna play when we get on stage.

The interesting thing about improvisation is you're making something up in front of the audience. Now music helps you out a little bit because you have an instrument that'll separate you from the audience.

Life isn't a science. We make it up as we go.

This is why improvisational music and comedy is so inspiring: You are seeing something being born, and that energy, there is no substitute for. These songs, most of them, are about a minute old when you hear them.

I always improvise with the crowd. Sometimes it will be a 50 percent show, sometimes 70 percent, sometimes it's almost a whole show where I wing it. It depends on my mood, the energy in the room. For sure, a portion of it is just kind of winging it.

My crutch was, in improvs, when in doubt, play insane, because you didn't have to excuse anything that came out of your mouth. It didn't have to make sense.

If there was a wrong note, it didn't matter as long as it was rocking.

I love when things can repeat and you can make things slightly different each time and just react to the music and react to the recording.

Normally, when I write the setlist for a Dream Theater show, I'll change it up every night, and we can basically play whatever we want.

As improvisers, we're acting as composers in front of people.

You play ensemble things that you had no idea you were going to play two minutes before.

Many times you never know what's going to happen. You'll play songs that you never thought you were going to play.

I love music. I'd love to go on Broadway and do a musical there. I just like to kind of go with whatever's inspiring at the moment, and kind of follow that as far as I can.

If any of you on your journeys see her-shout to me, whistle...he sang, and it became a habit for audiences to shout and whistle in response to those lines. There was nowhere he could hide in such a song that had all of its doors and windows open, so that he could walk out of it artlessly, the antiphonal responses blending with him as if he were no longer on stage.

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

I never work out my leads. Everything I do is usually totally spontaneous. If someone says, 'That was good; play that again,' I'm not able to do it.

When I do a take, I very often try things that I haven't planned to try to see if I can pull it off.

Improvisation is terribly haphazard.

With theatre, you have to be ready for anything.

No one set that I ever do is the same. I mean, if I go to a comedy club, and I perform three sets, all three sets are different because anything can happen in between sets.

I don't ever know where I'm going. Because one of the wonderful things about writing, which is different than working in programming, you don't need to know. You could just write and discover where you're going. And it's a great deal of fun.

I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.