Herbie Hancock Quotes

I'm enjoying the hell out of playing straight. It seems to be the case with everybody. We're having a lot more fun. The energy is going into the music now, instead of all the side trips we got into in the '70s.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.

In terms of music, I can try anything I want, even something that doesn't work at all, because I'm not putting my career in jeopardy.

Don't worry about what others say about your music. Pursue whatever you are hearing... but if everybody really hates your music maybe you could try some different approaches.

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise, and take chances, and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

You'll find little schools of musicians experimenting with different ways of making music in Brooklyn, all through Manhattan, in Queens, in Jersey, you know? The city is still bubbling with creativity.

With my voice and my band, I can do anything.

I associate creativity with independent music.

Jazz really does try to include everything. It's always been popular music. But the wonderful thing about jazz is its willingness to take chances.

Hip-hop is the only music in the world where you can take any instrument and make it hip hop. It's anybody's music. It's what you make of it. That's for anything you do in life.

Hip hop is doing the new rock thing; there are no rules. They can do anything, really. And that's inspiring.

To me, music has to be about freedom. It's the most important thing in my life.

My music is like my freedom space.

I mean, if you decided to go out today and get you an instrument and do whatever it is that you do, no one can tell you how you're going to do it but when you do it.

I was curious and hungry at a young age, and jazz was such a mystery to me, an ocean where you can express yourself in the moment. It represented freedom, it represented wearing wings and going somewhere with music.

We don't want to box ourselves within any type of genre, you know? Whatever feels good, if it moves us and we like it, we get on it and make it our own. That's what we do.

Jazz is pretty much the freest thing you can be a part of. It's the closest thing I can get to flying. It's fun, interactive. In its own way, it's a sport.

People like me thought America was the best place to be creative, to be free to create, to have the freedom to be who you are.

I loved the freedom of improvised music.

Jazz voices that unvanquishable, natural will toward creaativity and self-expression, depite everything, in the here and now.

I'm kind of lucky in the fact that I can take something that's in my head and write it down, or I can listen to a piece of music that somebody else has written and try to tap into what the music's saying and just kind of follow that, you know. I mean, nine times out of 10, I'm just kind of following where the music takes me.

Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.

Weezer isn't stuck in roles, so we just do what we want to do, what makes us excited.

They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear. There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.