Herbie Hancock On Apple, Breakdancing, and Buddhism

by Eliot Van Buskirk
Wired Blog Network
October 1, 2007

In the following (extended) interview, Herbie Hancock talks about serving on the board of a synthesizer company with Steve Wozniak, how he keeps his music fresh, what it was like to have released the biggest breakdancing hit ever, and his use of mental imagery techniques to record his latest album, River: The Joni Letters, featuring guest vocals from Norah Jones, Leonard Cohen, Tina Turner, Joni Mitchell, and others.

Wired News: This latest album is comprised of Joni Mitchell songs and her influences. Are there any tales from the studio you can tell us about?

HH: Joni, she's a poet. And her songs really emanate fresh from the words, you know -- that's the core place that she comes from. I knew I'd have to have the lyrics be the driving force for my record too. So we spent a lot of time discussing the words to Joni's songs. We even went so far as to -- and this was my idea -- give the lyrics of the songs to all the musicians and sit with them in the engineering booth before we'd record something, to discuss the lyrics and the environment that the lyrics were talking about. In a lot of cases, of her words are descriptive of a particular place where some activity was taking place, and even certain characters. We'd discuss that, and get almost a visual idea of what the lyrics were about. If anything, it was more like the way you'd approach doing a soundtrack, kind of a cinematic approach.

WN: So you'd come up with some kind of vision and then the music came right out of that -- that's a cool technique.

HH: Well that's the way I've been doing all my records for the past ten years now. This is something I learned in this latter part of my life that I really felt was not only appropriate, but a more substantial place to come from. And you think about the direction, think about vision for the record. And because of that, it's allowed me the opportunity to have every record be a new experience for me, and not just be a reaction to something I did before, or something someone else did before. So even though we were doing the music of Joni Mitchell, we purposefully set out not to do it the way she did it. Because she's not the one recording it this time, it's me!

WN: I have to ask you about this - when I was growing up in Manhattan, and the whole breakdancing thing started happening, "Rockit" was the only song that any of us would ever, ever dance to. When you recorded it, did you have any idea it would have that sort of serious effect on everybody?

HH: Nope, not even a clue that it would blow up like that. One funny experience: I remember being told that during that time about a breakdance contest, with 25 groups competing, and the groups could pick any record they wanted to to breakdance to. Well, 23 of them picked "Rockit" (laughs). And you know what I said? I said I'm glad I wasn't there. I wouldn't have wanted to hear Rockit 23 times in a row. (laughs) But it was really flattering - It became the anthem for scratching, and the beginnings of hip hop.

WN: Speaking of this cinematic approach that you were talking about earlier, I hear you're a big fan of the Red One videocamera.

HH: It's an incredible camera. I don't have one, but [on a tech blog] there was this blurb on Red One, which said the camera has five times the resolution of any digital videocamera today. I went to the site, and thought, "Woah, that looks like a weapon!" What an incredible piece of equipment, to have that kind of resolution. It's not cheap, but for what it is, it's very cheap. From what I read, people weren't expecting that camera ever to come out. Whatever technology they used to develop it, everybody thought it was vaporware. And if they did come out with it, it would cost like a quarter of a million dollars or more. And when they said $17,500, it was like, "what?" For what that is, that's a lot of money, but then I thought, "what would I use it for?"

WN: Are there any film projects that you're working on?

HH: Actually, there is a concept that a friend of mine is developing. We haven't gotten to the point of seriously pursuing it, but we're looking at different elements, and one of them is the Red One. They have a short demo of something Peter Jackson [Lord of the Rings] did using that camera, and it looks awesome. It looks film-like, but somehow a little different too, really interesting.

WN: As a young child, you had serious talent in the classical area, and a passion for electronics early too, later double-majoring in music and electrical engineering. My dad is also a pianist, and he also almost went into engineering at one point -

HH: (laughs) I think there's a relationship: math. Particularly with jazz, but not necessarily only with jazz, with classical music too. There's also a sense of exploration that's involved with science and with music that links them together. By the way, I always call myself a fresh-footed techie -- that's why I was excited about getting interviewed for Wired. I got my iPhone, not on the first day, but on the fourth day, because I had too many things to do. But on the fourth day the iPhone came out, I got one.

WN: What do you think about the iPhone, are you loving it?

HH: Oh heck yeah. I would have paid $800 for it, but I'll take it, you know?

WN: Do you record music onto a computer or tape? Do you have any recording tips to share with Wired News readers?

HH: You know what I usually try to do? When it's feasible, is to record on both analog tape, because it's linear, and also digitally, onto a hard drive. The reason I don't like to record it only digitally is that there's no way to increase the resolution of something that you've recorded at a certain sample rate. Recording digitally is sampling, really. That's what it is. It's slices. And if you use a certain number of slices, in the case of CDs as 44.1 kHz, those are slices translated into 0s and 1s, but you can't take that, once that's done, you can't increase the number of slices -- not with today's technology. You can't make 44.1 kHz into 96 kHz. So you're stuck with whatever that resolution is. Because tape is linear, you can always go back to that. If the technology changes, and there's a higher resolution, you have to go back to tape in order to have finer slices, which would be a higher resolution. As time passes and the technology develops -. We're already at a point where tape appears to be no longer necessary, because now we can go to 196 kHz, and that's very fine resolution. When I can record to both tape and digitally, that's what I do.

My advice is, don't depend on the technology. The music has nothing to do with the technology. If you're doing music, the music has to come first. And the technology is a tool for being able to produce the things that you feel. Not the other way around.

WN: I've just been listening to some of your latest tracks, and you're still running strong. So many musicians burn out, or can't keep going, and you've been through so many styles, so many incredible records; what do you attribute that longevity to? What's your secret?

HH: Well I have not shut myself off from learning, and the value and beauty of learning and expanding, exploring. That gets my adrenaline going. But I had the great advantage of working with Miles Davis back in the 60s, who, encouraged his young musicians (I was young then) to explore, to take chances, to go outside the box. And I've never forgotten those lessons. So I'm not dependant on staying in the same place. I like the idea of trying something new. I always try to find a way to challenge myself in some way that I feel is valuable to my development. But I have more to give. It's about giving, not getting. That's the bottom line. My feeling is that as long as you keep the flow of ideas going, which means not stopping them when they strike you in your life. Maybe the flow goes through you too, so that it's like a continuous flow, like a river. Then you continue to have ideas. Once you try and start hoarding them and stuff, then you stand in danger of it getting backed up (laughs).

There's only one you. And anyone else who tried to copy you is only a copy. And a copy is never as good as the original. It's not like digital copying. Human copying is not like digital copying, where you can get an exact duplicate of the original. We're not turned into 0s and 1s.

WN: There's a lot of in-between.

HH: One more thing I want to say to you. Many of the things that I've said to you have become clearer as a result of just living, or revelations that have come to me as a result of my having practiced Buddhism, now for 35 years [link]. And so I have a vantage point that I'm coming from that encompasses a pretty wide area. My belief is that not only are there more ways to look at something than just one way, but I believe that there are an infinite number of ways of looking at things. I apply that to music - People are multidimensional, but they don't know that. So I try my best to live what I believe. Each time, I try to show what, to me, is a new dimension. I've looked for something that others haven't explored in the same way before. If it's been done already, why reinvent the wheel? Why give somebody something that they already got, you know? I try to find some new way to do it, that I think is fresh. It works for me, and I think it works for others too.

We've gotten into a much deeper conversation about life and Buddhism. I will tell you I got my first computer in 1979. It was an Apple II Plus. And I've had every Apple computer since then, including a Lisa, which led to the Mac. I saw the whole thing unfold, and I was one of the first people involved in the development of digital keyboards. I was on the board of a company that made a keyboard called the Centauri, like Alpha Centauri. It connected to the Apple II. Steve Wozniak was on the board too. There were about 6 of us - 5 of us plus the CEO of the company. I've been involved with technology for a long, long time, and I'm one of the people who really pushed musicians toward embracing the technology from the pioneering days and development of computers and digital technology.

WN: Is there any new technology out now that you're enjoying using?

HH: Well, Mac OS X. As far as music goes, there's Logic Studio, which is Logic Pro 8, and some other software that makes up that package. We just got that last week and it's incredible; we've been playing around with that now. And I play a Korg Oasis, which is a workstation. I hired a guy, because now the stuff has gotten really beyond me (laughs). I had to decide some years ago, whether I'd be the guy that's making the music or the guy that's programming the synthesizer that produces the music, and I figure I'd better be the one making the music.

Update: The original title of this article implied that Hancock practices Zen Buddhism; in fact, he practices Nichiren Buddhism, as the link above indicates.