Herbie Hancock Quotes (173 Quotes)

We are all on the same trip in the band. We all realize that people in the music business, and the audience have an eye on us because collectively our history is extensive.

I've been a religious, spiritual person for a long time.

And jazz is also for the body because it is rhythmic, but it's also for the mind and for the soul, and it is very creative.

The mixture of all kinds of things, all kinds of beings - it's just like what we have here in this country.

Lionel can play anything totally out, blues, tear-jerking stuff, rock and African, ... Carlos didn't know him, but he trusted my judgment. When Lionel played, he blew everyone's minds -- the audience and Carlos' band. Their jaws were hanging.

We talked for a couple of hours before we played a note. We didn't talk about music, we talked about life - families, children, issues in the world, politics, so many things. The kind of camaraderie we developed helped make the music what it is. I wanted to find a common ground and connect as people first.

Creativity shouldn't be following radio; it should be the other way around.

You can practice to learn a technique, but I'm more interested in conceiving of something in the moment.

When I was a kid, I used to sit up in bed, put my elbows on the windowsill and look out at the stars and wonder. About space, eternity, the concept of God and creation.

We wanted to share creativity and didn't want to be bound by traditional jazz conventions.

Getting the Oscar had the biggest impression on me.

Americans are taught that white people did everything, but that is changing. American history and our dealings with other cultures are a constant conflict of understanding.

One of the greatest attributes of jazz, I think, is that it is that open.

He was a man of mystery, magic and mystique. It was often said he was an enigma. I would venture to say that many who said that just didn't get it.

Since time is a continuum, the moment is always different, so the music is always different.

I don't look at music from the standpoint of being a musician I look at it from the standpoint of being a human being.

I'm aware that a lot of what is happening in jazz has not had a very dynamic change in a long time.

Wisdom corresponds to the future it is philosophy.

A lot of times, other people turn me on to new people that are doing stuff, so I don't consider myself a spokesman for everything that's going on in jazz.

I'm involved in the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, and I work with students with that, and I also help try to raise funds for that.

When I was a kid, I won a contest and played a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Symphony, and I've written some movie scores, and I've been listening to orchestral music for years.

When I did Future 2 Future, it occurred to me, that I hadn't really done anything in electric music in a while.

I'm always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music.

He just blew me away and what it taught me was that Miles didn't hear it as a mistake.

Jazz is a music that translates the moment into a sense of inspiration for not only the musicians but for the listeners.

But I have to be careful not to let the world dazzle me so much that I forget that I'm a husband and a father.

I feel a lot more secure about the directions I take, than I might have, had I not practiced Buddhism.

So in other words, we were constantly challenged to grow, and that's what a master does.

There's Charlie Parker and there's Miles, there's Trane. I'm none of those guys, so why am I beating myself up trying to find the lost chord all the time

Other highlights When I started practicing Buddhism 21 years ago. Marrying the woman I married 26 years ago my wife is quite a woman. The birth of my daughter. Joining Miles Davis' band.

But I'm talking about responsibility, a sense of responsibility. Developing software to help human beings develop more of a sense of responsibility. Kids need that. Adults need it too. More self worth. More self-respect.

The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.

The thing is, much of the way I look at music now, and its role as an aspect of culture, and creative expression for human beings in the 21st century, much of the way I look at it for a record like Future 2 Future is very similar to how I might look at it for a record like Directions in Music.

Sometimes you can practice something but what you wind up playing when you're out doing a gig is not what you practiced. What you learn is not necessarily what you practice.

See, there were certain rules I'd always used, and people like Trane, they would break those rules.

So my parents, particularly my mother, she noticed that I seemed to be interested, so on my seventh birthday my parents got me a piano.

When I sense a more conservative and limiting attitude coming from musicians, than my impression is that they're really moving away from the true spirit of jazz.

I'm a human being all the time, even when I sleep. But I'm not a musician when I sleep, and I'm not a musician when I eat, unless I'm paying attention to music or talking about music.

I wasn't really aware that the blues was making the transition from acoustic to electric then, but that doesn't mean it didn't have any effect on what I was doing at the time.

I don't go back to anything, I just add. Just like when you eat a meal, it you eat one thing all the time it gets kind of boring.

My idea is that young people who are not as jaded about technology and the use of technology as we are, who didn't create the technological age, but are born into it, may be able to create software that addresses the issues that pertain to the human being and lead toward the advancement of creativity and the human spirit.

Well, I'm hoping that the narrow categories of music are forced to develop activities that reflect a broader variety of music, so that people get exposed to more variety that they certainly are now.

Although my parents were playing jazz for me when I was a kid, I didn't pay much attention until I saw someone my age improvising, playing jazz..

Don't be afraid to expand yourself, to step out of your comfort zone. That's where the joy and the adventure lie.

Most people think that classical music is a higher form than jazz only because it is from Europe, and we were taught in schools only about Western European history.

I started playing piano when I was 7. And I started with classical lessons. Then I really got exposed to jazz.

I'm looking less to musical sources for inspiration and broadening my scope beyond the entertainment field and looking more into life itself. Life today.

I brought my 40 years of jazz experience to the table, ... but I wanted to make something more ambitious than a little box.

Technology has made so much information available but what the technological community has not done is to make any attempt for us to figure out how we're going to assimilate all this information.

Aside from that, what was more in our heads when we made the new album is the concept of forging through and exploring new territory and encouraging other musicians to not be afraid to explore new territory.