Improvisation means coming to the situation without rigid expectations or preconceptions. The key to improvisation is motion.
BOBBY MCFERRINMiles Davis turned his back to the audience when he came out on stage, and he offended people. But, he wasn’t there to entertain; he was all about the music. I kind of do that.
More Bobby McFerrin Quotes
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I want them to have this sense of real, real joy from the depths of their being. Because I think when you take them to that place, then you open up a place where grace can come in.
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Music is still part of my spiritual life. Sometimes I sing my prayers. When I get audiences singing, I hope I’m helping them feel connected to something beyond themselves.
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I use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.
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I couldn’t do anything without faith. I couldn’t open up my eyes, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t sing.
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Then I came up with this crazy idea just to walk out on the stage with no band at all and just start singing whatever came to mind.
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It’s not that I don’t love the song. My songs are like my children: some you want around and some you want to send off to college as soon as possible.
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So I want to come back here [to Israel] to see the places that I read about every day. It’s very important to my faith to feed [my] spirit in Israel.
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When I was figuring out how to perform solo, I wanted to move back and forth between bass riffs, melody, and harmony, so I often used sounds instead of — or alongside — the words of a song.
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Here’s a little song I wrote. You might want to sing it note for note. Don’t worry, be happy.
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Improvisation is the courage to move from one note to the next.
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I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them.
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Remembering that life can be full of surprises is useful in any part of your life.
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This is what I want everyone to experience at the end of my concert… everyone has this sense of rejoicing. I don’t want them to be blown away by what I do,
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The audience is like my instrument. It’s not just me up there, it’s collaborative.
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The voice gets to the soul of a person more than any other instrument. Because it’s the voice. It sings talks, it cries, it laughs, it squeals, it barks, it shouts it whispers, There is no other instrument that can do that. We’re born with it.
BOBBY MCFERRIN