A Quote by Patti Harrison

My solo stuff for live shows is very meandering. I write a lot of slower bits that give me room to improvise and play with a character. — © Patti Harrison
My solo stuff for live shows is very meandering. I write a lot of slower bits that give me room to improvise and play with a character.
My character has to be alive. It can't be a mere prop, and it has to have a life of its own. I need to have that space to play around and the scope to interact with the people around me. That freedom would give me a lot of margin to improvise with.
TV shows and stuff give people in the show business very bad names. I'm not going to name any shows, but a lot of shows.
My friends, we all improvise together usually. So we write what I think is a good script but always leave a lot of room to find stuff on the day; and we always do find something. That's the advantage to having actors who are, in their own right, writers.
I have great faith in the actors. When they improvise, it always sounds better than the stuff I write in my bedroom. When they improvise, they make it sound alive.
You can actually improvise a lot as a voice actor. It's not that entirely different than shooting a live action movie; the characters mouths are quite easy to manipulate once all the information is built into the computer. So you can improvise a lot and it doesn't matter really how far along they are in the process they can really just make the character say something different.
Hearing your voice and your instrument kind of breathe in the room, it affects the way you perform the songs. For instance, if you have that reverb, you can give the songs a little more space. You can play them a little slower or you can play less of the guitar part and just let it open up, which I really love. It's so nice to play a listening room, because the audience feels a certain way too.
People say that you want to be varied in your career, and I've done so many things and am very appreciative. But, the one thing I've never done and wanted to do was to be a regular on a TV show, where you get 22 weeks of the year to develop and play a character. I've done arcs of five or eight episodes on shows, but I'd like to have a character that's rich enough and deep enough to want to explore and live with for a few years. Playing the same character, but doing different scenes seems very exciting to me.
I'm glad I'm successful at it, because it's allowed me to live very well financially, and give my kids a lot of things. It's enabled me to do stuff that I otherwise wouldn't be able to do. But it's not who I am.
Whether I'm writing solo stuff, electronic stuff, or material for Motley, I just write to write. I come up with it and put things in different piles.
I do a lot of voice over for Japanese anime titles as well as live-action stuff and original stuff from the States. 'Legion of Super Heroes,' 'New Wolverine: The X - Men' animated series, 'Afro Samurai' and some live-action stuff, TV shows here and there - I like to mix it up.
Write a lot. And I mean a ridiculous amount. You have to write so much that you don't mind throwing away and changing things that you've written - which is the second thing you have to do. A lot of young writers are very precious about their words. Don't be - you've got to be ready to burn stuff. You're not as good as you think you are, at least not yet. The more you write, the faster you'll write, and the less you'll mind throwing stuff out.
The Angels shows are really intense. We play for a couple hours at a time. They're very theatrical and full of audience interaction and emotion. I've seen a lot of people crying and stuff. It's a little bit like church, but it's very secular.
When we first started playing we did a lot of rehearsing. We used to write out everything. In fact, that's the way everybody rehearses: we play the tunes and improvise.
I enjoy doing these silly little videos, and a lot of stuff online is stuff I actually created for my live comedy shows.
Ralph Fiennes was a big hero of mine acting-wise growing up and while I was training. I just find him so watchable. He was playing this very intimidating character when we worked together and it certainly felt like he was in character off set as well! He was very cool. Before a scene, he'd be like, "Come on. Let's improvise. Let's just do stuff." But Jesus Christ. He's Ralph Fiennes!
Jazz is something that's constantly changing. Its sole purpose is to let people improvise, to let them solo differently each time they play. And that's always been what I like best.
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