I think I compose as a listener: improvising and listening back excites me because I get to ideas that never would have occurred. Then I bring in the computers and samplers... and I begin to loop and process and change them.
I did a smaller gig with an acoustic guitar and a drum machine. In one song, something wrong happened with the drum machine. I tried to cover up the mistake by playing faster and improvising a new song but it became crazy, and I had to admit it was all a mess.
In the U.S., it's like, you start with a great script, and then on set - not everybody, but definitely in the Apatow group - you go off, and you're improvising on camera. So while you're on camera, you're saying things that no one else has ever heard before during the actual take.
I love food and am very good at improvising when preparing it - it's a really creative experience for me.
I'm by no means a pianist. I think that's safe to say, but the piano, for me, I would say it's the enabler. It gave me what I needed and gives me what I need in order to write a song. And I think playing or improvising on the piano is where I feel most liberated and sort of less conscious of all my insecurities or inadequacies.
My younger brother and I have been writing together, mainly for fun, for years, but we've been improvising together since we were kids. Literally.
While you are improvising, you need to be prepared, and I like to have a sense of who the character is, what she likes to read, where she grew up, where we went to school, and what she has for breakfast, so that when I go to set, I'm free to explore.
I can't imagine doing anything without being an improviser. I can't imagine trying to write or act or direct without what improvising offers you.
But one of the things I learned from improvising is that all of life is an improvisation, whether you like it or not. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century came out of people dropping things.
Improvising things is always changing. A lot of momentum.
Truth of the matter is, jazz is American music. And that doesn't mean bebop. Jazz is really about improvising. All the music that's been created in America has been pretty much improvised... Whether it's hillbilly or rock n' roll for blues, it's basically jazz music... It's basically about another way of hearing what comes out of America.
