Creativity Quote by Herbie Hancock

“Miles’ sessions were not typical of anybody else’s sessions” is Herbie Hancock doing something musicians rarely do in public: admitting that the vibe is the method. On paper, a recording date is a controlled experiment - charts, takes, fixes. Hancock’s line tells you Miles Davis treated the studio like a live wire. “Totally unique” isn’t praise-by-adjective so much as a warning label: don’t expect the usual rules to hold.

The intent is partly historical correction. Hancock, who lived inside that machinery, is pushing back against the myth that jazz greatness is just virtuosity captured on tape. With Miles, the session itself was composition. He’d give minimal direction, keep players slightly off-balance, change arrangements at the last second, and let discomfort generate discovery. The subtext is that Miles engineered conditions where identity mattered more than correctness - and where leadership looked like restraint. He didn’t over-explain because explanation would close the door that uncertainty pries open.

Context matters: Hancock is recalling an era when Davis was building new languages (post-bop into electric), and the studio became a laboratory for risk. Calling the sessions “not typical” is also a quiet jab at the industrialization of recording - the idea that art can be streamlined. Miles’ process couldn’t be franchised. It required specific people, a specific pressure cooker, and a bandleader confident enough to let mistakes breathe long enough to become style.

Hancock’s admiration lands because it’s practical, not mystical: uniqueness here means the environment was designed to produce the unexpected, again and again.