Home > Work > Herbie Hancock: Possibilities
1 " There is no such thing as art," he said. "There is only this painting, this piece of music, that sculpture. And it either resonates with you or it doesn't." He paused for a moment and then added, "There is no such thing as art, there are only works."... In those two moments, Antonioni taught me something profound. "
― Herbie Hancock , Herbie Hancock: Possibilities
2 " Man, why don’t you practice?” Tony would ask, as if there was nothing strange about a teenage drummer lecturing the greatest jazz trumpeter of his generation, a man old enough to be his father. "
3 " 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. "
4 " Miles,” I said, confused, “am I in the band?” Miles turned to look at me, a hint of a smile on his face. “You makin’ a record, muthafucka!” he said. And then he was gone. That Tuesday, May 14, I went down to the CBS 30th Street Studio with the rest of the guys. We still had never really played the tunes for the record together, but Miles wasn’t interested in rehearsing. He just wanted us to play, with the tape recorders rolling, to capture whatever was going to happen. I later found out that this was the way Miles always recorded: He wanted to capture the first, most honest version of a song, even if there were mistakes in it. Miles believed that if you rehearse a song too much, you stifle the creative moment. Music was about spontaneity and discovery, and that’s what he tried to capture on his records. The first time the horns made it through the entire melody, that was the take that would be on the record. Miles didn’t waste words, and he didn’t waste time. In 1956, with his first quintet, he recorded four full records in one day—Cookin’, Relaxin’, Workin’, and Steamin’—with just a few tracks added from an earlier session. He just went into the studio and played. When you record like that, it’s scary at first, but then it sharpens you up. You’re forced to go in with confidence, because you know you just have to do it. "
