Herbie Hancock Music Quotations

I am not fundamentally a musician, I am fundamentally a human being.

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

At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music.

The true artform is being a human being.

It is people's hearts that move the age.

In the world of Art there are no wrong choices.

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

I think I was supposed to play jazz.

Jazz to me is the spirit of freedom. I mean real freedom. Freedom to explore. Freedom to express. Freedom to pour out your guts.

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

I don't view myself as a musician anymore - I view myself as a human being that functions as a musician when I'm functioning as a musician, but that's not 24 hours a day. That's really opened me up to even more perspectives because now I look at music, not from the standpoint of being a musician, but from the standpoint of being a human being.

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.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

Music isn't about music, it's about life.

There's so much spontaneity involved, what do you practice? How do you practice teamwork? How do you practice sharing? How do you practice daring? How do you practice being nonjudgmental?

Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.

One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing.

I try to practice with my life.

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

Life is not about finding our limitations, it's about finding our infinity.

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

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that goes far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

As the 1960s began, jazz music was still at an apex, with hard bop groups led by the likes of Miles Davis and John Coltrane remaining a force on the musical landscape.

It was interesting putting this record together, because I was putting it together with musicians who claim that I was a big influence on the music they're making now.

When you try to define a purity as being something that's closed and limited, you're not talking about the music that I play called jazz.

From '70 to '73 I'd had a sextet, but the band was not self-supporting and I couldn't afford it, so I broke it up. And then I didn't know what kind of music I wanted to do, because I was just fed up to here with it. It wasn't fulfilling anymore.

That's one of the reasons for the title of the record, Future 2 Future, because here they are creating kind of a new musical approach, underground approach, but coming out of what used to be underground but what has become popular, which is the whole hip-hop scene.

A lot of this look backwards in society and musically is to find some of the real roots, because they can't find them here. There are roots in the past, but not so much now. Maybe this explains their need to do that, and if that's the case, it's OK.

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.

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.

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.

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

I was making a hierarchy out of music, and it's ridiculous.

Recently I've been listening to Mahler; it's beautiful stuff. I just saw a performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony on television, and it was awesome. The music was so gorgeous I wasn't just crying tears, I was sobbing.

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 the suggestion was made that I might consider doing music of Joni Mitchell, I thought it was a fantastic idea. Joni, I admire not only for her music but for her person, because she's a person that really stands out for what she believes in.

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.

When I do concerts, because I've been in the business for a long time and certain pieces of music have become associated with me, I do some pieces from the past.

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

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.

A lot of the people that are making the music didn't have the kind of experiences I've had, playing with some of the great masters 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 hope to do more movie scores, I hope to do more work in the orchestral setting, some more tours that are more in the line that classical musicians play.

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

My hope is that the music will serve as a metaphor for the actions taken by the inhabitants of this wonderful planet as a call for world harmony on all levels.

When I was coming up, I practiced all the time because I thought if I didn't I couldn't do my best.

It's easy to get sidetracked with technology, and that is the danger, but ultimately you have to see what works with the music and what doesn't. In a lot of cases, less is more. In most cases, less is more.

And it's also made me aware that music isn't about music.

The result is a music that allows us to all go outside the pigeonholes the music business forces us to stay in. We're breaking down expectations, walking the tightrope, while not scaring our fan bases away.

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

It's not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.

It might be something as simple as saying the right word to the right person at the right time-and that could change the course of history. You never really know. But the whole thing is to work at the process of being in sync with the universe, so that everything will align at the proper time so that you can deliver that which is your life mission. And that's why we're here as individuals. And then there's our contribution to the collective. It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.

Jazz is about being in the moment.

A jazz musician is not a jazz musician when he or she is eating dinner or when he or she is with his parents or spouse or neighbors. He's above all a human being . . . the true artform is being a human being.

The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.

I am still a jazz musician and not a pop star in terms of money and so I have to take care of my family first, then my extended family and my country.

The fact that young hip-hop artists are searching for the jazz roots of their music acknowledges the greatness of roots, helps a person get a sense of being grounded, of being attached, of coming from somewhere.

I've had a lot of music in my own head.

We decided it would be interesting to approach the music as a group solo.

What's music supposed to be about anyway? Is it a means for a musician to masturbate, or is it for people to listen to?

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.

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.