David Thewlis Quotes

Improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing. That's a kind of paradoxical thing about improvising.

No, improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing.

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.

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

Improvisation is too good to leave to chance.

I play by ear - I'm self-taught. And so everything I do is through that technique.

You have to react to what's around you in the moment, whatever the music is. Just think of it as some place you have to enter and you need to find the key.

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.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation.

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.

As a singer, I float around. I'm kind of scatty, bouncing around a lot. I try to adapt to what's going on around me in the song and the arrangement.

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

To be a good improviser, you have to study composition as a parallel. Because what improvisation is, on a high level, is spontaneous composition.

One thing I liked about 'Silver Bell' is that I barely knew how to play in the tuning I was writing in, and I just went for it anyway.

I've never seen Key think about how he was going to act on a song. He just is whoever he is that day.

Some of my best songwriting choices started as mistakes or learning curves, when I accidentally hit a 'wrong' key or something. I try not to lose that the more I learn the how's and why's of piano.

Songs seem to always spring from improvisation.

In the past, we never really had that kind of spontaneity on record. When you start touring, you play songs in a certain way and then I start to feel like it's tough to really get lost in my playing.

I like to improvise so much live because I get bored playing the same thing over again. It's like the kid at school that already knows all the answers so doodles all over the paper. I do that a lot live.

A lot of improvisation and freedom went into 'Pinata.'

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.

As an improviser, my nature is to take a theme and constantly rework it.

I try to be prepared for the moment, through understanding, and being warmed up, knowing all about chords and scales, so I don't even have to think and I can get right to what it is I want to say.

In improvising, you've got your scale; you've got the notes that are going to sound good with other notes, the intervals that are going to sound good. But you've also got all the chromatic possibilities, the possibilities of sounding dissident, of being unexpected.