Ritchie Blackmore Quotes

I'm not thinking about what needs to be on the radio. I'm not thinking about anything other than - I'm just going to let this music come out of me and not have any sort of preconceived notion of what I should do. I'm just going to do it.

I don't worry too much about the script, I just ad lib, like Pearl Bailey.

I play like I always used to, with no agenda. And, every once in a while, I will play something I really hadn't thought about or even intended to play. And I'll go, 'Whoa! What was that?'

In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.

There's never anything planned. I just do what I feel is best for the song at that time.

All of my solos were improvised initially - I would go in and get my bearings and see what I came up with.

I don't plan. I don't think, 'I have to do this kind of part 'cause I've done that kind of part.' I'm not a very good planner.

I like to improvise.

I've never been good at improvising.

More of me comes out when I improvise.

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

I was the same kind of father as I was a harpist - I played by ear.

I do read music, but I prefer playing from the heart.

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.

So I figured in keeping with the record, I'd do something off the wall which is show up for free and wing it... I don't know, I'm just going to play some songs. I think it'll be fun.

I love flying by the seat of my pants, going at something instinctually.

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.

It struck me that it would be fun to just play stuff with Hauschka. Not even have a project in mind, but just get together and make up some music and see what came out.

My technique is different, and I am more spontaneous. I don't like rehearsing.

I'd listen to a song and say, 'Hang on, I like that piano thing,' so I'd play the guitar like that and get the vibe from it, and it just evolved from the get-go. It was pretty obvious what to do; You don't think about rock n' roll: you just do it.

Improvisation is really not so much remembering things. And this is what I do when I play. I forget things. When I go on the stage, I want my mind to be a blank, so that I can - things can come into me without my knowing where they came from.

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 plan my novels because if I know what is going to happen, it bores me rigid. I let the story tell itself.

I think there are actors who are like, 'Okay, what am I doing, how am I doing it, what's the appeal? Tell me what to do, what are the exact lines from the script? Okay, I got it.' I am not that way. I would be a terrible bus driver. I'd want to be like, 'Oh, let's take this side road! Let's see what happens when we go down this back alley.'

The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough.