Bernard Sahlins Quotes

It was spontaneously composed as I was playing it. And then I added a couple of other overdub textures on top of it after the fact. But it's one of those things where I wouldn't be able to sit down and specifically write that. That's just what came out.

Improvisation is a compositional method.

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

Most of the time, particularly with this record, 'The Light of the Sun,' I really just been standing in front of a microphone and blacking out musically, you know. I'd come back a couple hours later and there's six songs from beginning to end, you know? I don't know what I'm going to say. I don't know how I'm going to say it.

Improvised music involves a lot of intuition and I like developing intuition.

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.

It felt scary because there was no auditioning, no rehearsing.

Sometimes I play something, and I haven't recorded it, and I don't know where it came from, why my hands did what they did, what key it was in, anything.

When I'm performing music, it's like I'm doing a big improv.

I don't practice or write stuff down - everything I do onstage was just made up before I went on.

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

When I'm in stage, I never plan, you know, 'I'm going to do this.' But of course, you have a concept what you're going to do. But you don't really plan it.

My records are one thing. My live performances are something totally different because they're very improvised performances.

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

Improv is like writing. It's actually a different discipline to acting. It helps acting greatly, but it's completely different. It's the same side of your brain when you write as when you improv.

I don't approach my acting as just saying a few lines and then going off-screen. It's a craft. I really invest in trying to make it a craft.

There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence.

I'll write and make chords with my voice sometimes if I don't have an instrument even though it takes a million times longer.

The actor shouldn't edit themselves or be anxious. And the actors that I admire are always the ones who are inventive and their imaginative life in free-willing. It's a director's job to go, "No here, don't do that, go there."

Now one does not think during creative work: any more than one thinks when driving a car. One has a background of years — learning — unlearning— success — failure — dreaming — thinking — experience — back it goes — farther back than one's ancestors: all this, — then the moment of creation, the focussing of all into the moment. So I can make — "without thought" — fifteen carefully-considered negatives one every fifteen minutes, — given material with as many possibilities.

You might have asked [about skill] of an artist or a musician or whatever... but with me it just happens.

I don't think of myself as a great improver. A lot of times there's long periods of silence when everyone in the recording studio is looking at their watch and waiting for me to say something. And I'm searching desperately in my brain for anything before something dribbles out.

With practice the craft will come almost of itself, in spite of you and all the more easitly if you think of something besides technique.

Filmmaking is like any kind of art form. You have to try to figure it out, and you're going to do that by trying. It's like teaching a child to walk. It may start by walking, but eventually it will fall. And I have kids, but I know that that will enable them to stand up again and understand why they fell, and how they can avoid that. They will walk better and faster, and stronger. Filmmaking is the same.

I do not see in what manner practice alone can be sufficient for the production of correct, excellent, and finished pictures. Works deserving this character never were produced, nor ever will arise, from memory alone.