" Fifteen years had passed since I first learned to improvise by copying George Shearing records. From the beginning, the goal was to move beyond imitation and find my own voice, and I felt that that was finally happening. Miles had been the guiding light to my growth, encouraging all of us in the band to develop our own styles of playing, and during my five and a half years in the quintet I did start to develop my own sound. But it wasn’t until I got out on my own that I felt I could really explore it. Now that I had my own sextet, I started thinking analytically about what actually goes on within a jazz group. At every moment onstage players are making choices, and each choice affects every other member of the group. So each player has to be prepared to change directions at any given moment—just as Miles did when I played that “wrong” chord onstage a few years earlier. Everybody in a jazz ensemble has learned the basic framework of harmony and scales and how they fit. They know the basic song structure of having the rhythm section—piano, bass, and drums—playing together while the horns carry the melody. But apart from those basics, jazz is incredibly broad. There are really uncountable ways of playing it. For the pianist alone there are so many choices to make: what pitch, how many notes, whether to play a chord or a line. I have ten fingers, and they’re in motion almost all the time, so all of those decisions must happen in an instant. I’m reacting to what the rest of the band is playing, but if I’m only reacting, then I’m not really making a choice; I’m just getting hit and being pushed along. Acting is making a choice, so all the players must be ready to act as well as react. The players have to be talented enough, and confident enough, to do both. I had watched Miles surround himself with amazing musicians and then give them the freedom to act. "
― Herbie Hancock , Herbie Hancock: Possibilities