Syd Quotes

I've never written lyrics. I get up in front of a microphone, and I just sing what comes to the top of my head.

When I start playing I'm just a rollercoaster of sound. I don't know what's coming next, I never do, and I sit and sign and talk to the people afterwards.

90 percent of the records I make are spontaneous.

I like to improvise.

I write songs, and I sing them. I never formulated a plan; I can't tell anyone else how to do this. But it feels right, so I just kind of enjoy it and get on with it.

Well, I would say that music just happens with me, I'm not in the driver's seat when I am at the piano, the piano is.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.

I've always been a spontaneous singer. And all the stuff that you hear on the end of the songs, what they call the ad libs - that just comes out of my head. That's not thought out at all. I have the verses and the choruses, and then after that it's total improvisation.

I have learned a lot from jazz. I compare good acting to jazz music. The more you study and prepare as an actor, the more equipped you are to live in the moment. Just like the gifted musicians in my dad's quartet, it takes a courageous actor to be free.

I used to dance around, I used to sing a lot, I remember, and beat box.

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.

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

I freestyle everything.

Acting is like music and you improvise. It's like jazz, there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's not a plan. You practice to music and you just play it.

The combination of what's written and just being in the moment is always the best way. You gotta start out with something solid and then you play.

Singing is what got me into everything and made me fall in love with this industry.

When it's time to make music, that's about getting lost for me. To be a control freak is not half as good as being a freak who's casually in control. You're feeling around in the dark for something that feels good.

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.

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.

You can practice to learn a technique, but I'm more interested in conceiving of something in the moment.

I would love to be a singer if I had the talent for it. I'd love to be a graphic designer if I had the talent for it. Those are things I've always just admired - the work of other artists.

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

What I have to do as a musician is do everything that is not on the music.

Ever since I was really really little, I was just singing all the time. Like one of my favorite games when I was little would be to just have one of my sisters pick a title, and I would impromptu create that song.

I love to improvise when it's appropriate and encouraged by a producer.