More Herbie: Our Interview

Herbie Hancock In the Moment

Dig_iT catches up with Rockit composer and jazz genius in: The
Dig_iT Interview

Elaine Dennis Dec 13, 2002

Talk about a frontrunner: Herbie Hancock performed a Mozart piano concerto
with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 11. As a youth, he became
obsessed with electronics. In college, he took a double major in music and
electrical engineering.
By 23, he was playing with jazz giant Miles Davis. In the ’70s, he was the
first major jazz musician to use synthesizers. And Dig_iT will never forget
Herbie as the digital lifestyle pioneer who read his Grammy acceptance
speech from a Palm Pilot, a first. It was one of eight Grammies (and an
Academy Award) the jazz legend has earned.
Hancock embodies the digital lifestyle: in the studio, at work, on the road,
and at home. He’s always up on the latest gadgets, and continues to pioneer
the use of technology in music and performances, currently by working with
new Surround-Sound technologies.
Herbie also founded Transparent Music, a multimedia company dedicated to
the presentation of barrier-breaking music, with the help of his manager
David Passick and former Verve Records president Chuck Mitchell. The
company plans to take advantage of almost every distribution format
available including concert events, films, TV, CDs, DVDs, and the Internet. A
recent company project called “Future 2 Future” has Hancock collaborating
with Bill Laswell and some of the edgiest young hip-hop and techno artists to
create their own music of the future via technology.
As if he’s not busy enough, five years ago Hancock founded the Rhythm Of
Life Foundation, an organization that’s trying to help bridge the technological
divide and find ways to use technology to help humanity. According to
Hancock,
“the philosophy of the foundation is based on the communication of multi-
cultural awareness and tolerance among communities, on instilling a sense of
courage and creative initiative in children, and educating one another about
our rich and complex ethnic heritage.” The foundation’s website is at
www.rolo.org.
We caught up with Herbie just before he headed out on a concert tour for
Future 2 Future, and just before he completed his Future 2 Future Live DVD,
mixed in Surround Sound.
Herbie told us his motto was “don’t be afraid to try.” He’s certainly lived up
to his words.
DIG_IT: What was your earliest recollection of technology being significant
in your life—something that really made you say ‘Wow!’?
HERBIE HANCOCK: That was in the early ’70s during my very raw avante-
garde jazz period. It was also a time when people were still into new sounds
and psychedelic stuff from the late ’60s. Synthesizers were just starting to
show their face on the scene as being a cool new thing.
I was working on my Crossings record in San Francisco at the time. My
manager and record producer, David Rubenson, suggested we put a
synthesizer on the record. I said, “Well that’s cool, but I don’t know anyone
that plays the synthesizer.” David said he knew this guy, Patrick Gleason,
who had his own studio and was doing synthesizer stuff and had a whole big
set-up. I didn’t know anything about synthesizers, but I said, “Tell you what.
Here’s this tune. Why don’t you ask him if he’d be interested in creating an
introduction on spec—if I don’t like it, I’m not gonna use it.”
I didn’t even have to go to his studio. We gave him the tape and he sent it
back a couple days later. When I sat down to listen to what he did, it blew
my mind.
DI: Were you worried at all about how your fans would react? How did you
feel about taking this out on the road and having this totally new experience?
HH: I was excited about it! Nobody in jazz was using synthesizers at the
time.
It’s interesting to me that a lot of the artists that are creating the new
electronic music scene today have been influenced by Sextant and some
other records I did during that period. So it’s kind of come back in another
form today.
DI: I remember when we went to a party together during Macworld in the
late ‘90s and we heard one of the DJs spinning your tune Rockit.
HH: Rockit was much later than Sextant, it was 1983. I’m talking about
music that I did back in 1972—so it was 10 years or so before Rockit. This
totally avante-garde music I was doing then was basically non-electronic,
except for some of the stuff Patrick did. But was reaching out in that
direction. We were very much into new textures and new sounds. And that
music was very raw and far out. That kind of sound had an influence on
Rockit. Also, it was a precursor to a lot of the hip-hop things and to the
electronic scene today. But it wasn’t Rockit that was the biggest influence on
them, it was Sextant and a tune I did called Nobu. I didn’t find that out until
I did Future 2 Future.
DI: Tell us about the Future 2 Future concept.
HH: It started with Bill Laswell, my producer. He sparked my interest by
saying that the stuff that I had done back in the very early ’70s was
influencing young electronic musicians today.
I’d heard maybe one or two things that sounded a little bit interesting, but I
really didn’t know anything about the new electronic music. Then Bill started
playing me some things I hadn’t heard and I finally got the idea. He thought
it would be interesting for me to work with young people who are working
electronically and were influenced by stuff that I did acoustically back 30
years ago.
DI: So did Bill help find these people?
HH: He helped me connect with these people—and I trust Bill. The first stuff
I heard was what he had put together with them to submit to me for my
record. I didn’t hear material that they had done before. This was the idea
for Future 2 Future—to record my immediate musical response from hearing
what they were doing for the first time.
Bill wanted that kind of spontaneity and I was interested. Even Gershwin’s
World, which I did before Future 2 Future, came from a more spontaneous
place. So it was Bill’s realization that people in this new electronic scene had
been influenced by me, and his own vision of what I might like to do and
what would sound good on a record.
DI: Was there any new technology that played a role in creating the record?
HH: The techniques for producing the record involved the latest technology
totally. We used ProTools for the editing. As opposed to being a post-
production process, the editing was a part of the creation of the music. Bill
did the editing without me being there. I would do some overdubs on
something that he had prepared and then he would go and edit that with
stuff we already had and maybe even add some other stuff. Then I would
hear that back and it would be totally different from what I heard before, and
I would already be on the keyboard responding to it.
So once the record was done and I wanted to put a group together to tour, I
had to figure out how to keep that spontaneity. It was kind of a dilemma—to
keep the spirit of the record and not have everything sound completely
different. How would anyone know that this thing was this tune as opposed
to one of the other tunes? So we decided to nail down certain signatures that
were on the pieces that would capture their spirit and still be spontaneous
live.
And then we added an element which was totally new for live playing—and
that was the Surround Sound experience. I’d really wanted to do it and so we
figured out a way that made sense. First of all, live recording consoles are
not built for Surround Sound, they don’t have enough outputs. Then, the
engineer is used to doing stereo. How were we going to get this guy to do
Surround Sound? How are we going get this done live? Every night you have
a sound check and every night is a different venue and you have to figure
out what to do. Our solution was to use two engineers. One guy did the
regular front-of-house stuff, and the other guy did surround.
The keyboards we had were designed in such a way that we could use them
for surround too. In addition to the two stereo outputs they had two auxiliary
outputs and the construction of the keyboard was such that the different
components of the sound—you could actually select which combination of
outputs you could send the components to. Say, if it was a high frequency,
high wavy sound component, we could send that to an auxiliary output and
send another more tonal straight brass sound to the left stereo channel and
another component to the right. So the surround component would come out
of the surround speakers and the other would come out of the stereo
speakers. That’s why we called it “immersive mixing”—a term we created.
As a result, we were approached by Thomas Holman—the TH of THX before
his company was bought out by Lucas—and we mixed the DVD at Skywalker
Ranch. Tom had heard what we were doing and was a fan. He actually mixed
some of my older material in 10.2 Surround Sound.
ED: What a great way for someone to showcase their stuff—with someone
like you who is really into pushing the limits of their technology and making
amazing music.
HH: The technology community actually sort of laughed at Tom Holman for
10.2, saying, “come on, this is ridiculous. 5.1 has been around for a while
and what more do you need?” But we blew their minds.
I just went to the Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention and
everything was in Surround Sound. There are now live boards that have
Surround Sound capabilities, so the word is out. I guess that’s why I had
such a great interest in doing the live show in Surround Sound. I wanted to
do it before everybody else. [laughs]
ED: So what is it that you are interested in now? What do you think is cool?
HH: What’s cool for me? The new software instruments. As a matter of fact,
we are pushing the envelope again, because we used some of the first
software instruments on the Future 2 Future tour. Software instruments by
Emagic—they have a Rhodes sound that is more like the Rhodes than any
other synthesizer I ever heard except for the Rhodes itself. They have a
clavinet that we use that is just like a clavinet. There’s a thing called the B4
which is actually a B3 organ. We used that on the tour. We jumped right into
it.
You know what? I’ve got to go, I’ve got people coming over in 10 minutes
and I’m still in my pajamas.
Elaine Dennis is a freelance writer, poet and advocate of music, wine and
technology, who resides in the California wine country. Reach Elaine at
elaine@inkit.com.