Sammy Nestico Interview

Ray Wright : Are you continuing to voice ensembles for Basie as you did in these two charts? (Straight Ahead, Hay Burner)

Sammy Nestico : Well, that voicing where you double the trombones exactly under the trumpets, I don't do that much anymore, but it's on of the ways to do it and the young arrangers should know it. Neal Hefti does that a lot and it's great. More and more I like that triad voicing in the trumpets with the fourth trumpet doubled, over a cluster in the trombones, like you pointed out in your analysis. I use that a lot. I really keep it simple.

RW : But that's a lesson in itself because it's so effective. The young writers need to understand that it doesn't take a million extra notes in a chord to be effective.

SN : Yes, I'm still true to my aim for simplicity. I used to write very complicated. The older I get, the more I go back to simplicity.

RW : That's interesting, when were you writing complicated?

SN : I was in the service and in the fifties and early sixties wrote the Swingphonic Series -"London Bridge Is Falling Down"is one of them. I used to write a lot of complicated stuff. Like most young people, I tried to write everything I knew in that one chart.

Bill Finnegan is my idol and he's a pretty complicated writer. Then I'd keep getting simpler, and then I started writing for Basie. And he's such a simple man. He plays simple piano, and he's beautiful, but there's a charm about it. It's difficult to write simple and good.

I started getting out my eraser and after I was done, rather than adding things, I'd look at the score and keep erasing things out of it. So I find that that's my style now and I like it.

RW : What can you tell young writers about what your priorities are when you start out on a new chart?

SN : Who can say what is the best way? I'm really kind of self-taught because every time I went to a teacher he started me out on Ⅰ-Ⅳ-Ⅴ chords and the Ⅷ7 and all that and it never quite fit into the bag that I was trying to write in. So I have my own ways of going about things.

I normally don't write my introduction until last, believe it or not. I start on the first chorus and if I use any material at all to get to the second chorus, I go back and use this material for my introduction and for the ending. That ties the whole arrangment together, makes it correlated. It might be in different keys, but I do that so it sounds consistent. I remember in my early days it might have taken two or three days to write and arrangement and every day I felt different and that made it inconsistent. Some things felt good in 4 and the next day in 2, and my figures weren’t consistent. So now I try to tie it together, to find something to hang my hat on.

I also find that if I start without on idea of what I’m going to do, a plan, I sit here forever trying to do it. But if I have a plan I say, ‘First chorus this, second chorus this, I’ll do this, I’ll go there,’ then at least I have something to go by, a model. Every time I don’t have that plan ahead of time I sit here looking at pater. It’s a framework to find out what I’m going to say in that arrangement, or who’s going to be the featured star, or am I going to modulate, or whatever.

But I think my best arrangments are the ones that I sing in the car, somewhere away from the piano. I sing the melody; if the melody stands by itself, I’ve got it made. That’s it basically for Basie; I try to get a fine melody and block it off and work for swinging figures.

RW : What do you get from Finnegan?

SN : I still love him; he’s my favorite. His harmonic structures, his inversions of chords, his orchestration, I love what he does. It’s classic. He creeps into my writing. You know I tell kids at clinics, ‘What happens is you pick out four or five favorite writers and emulate them. Little by little, these little pieces of these writers become you. It’s no longer someone else, it’s you.’

Of course, everyone only associates my writing with Basie, but I’ve written hundreds of charts for strings or for television, but people don’t assosiate it with me. But I’m thrilled to writed for Basie; I think he’s the greatest guy in the world.

RW : What’s your feeling about form? What about charts that play the tune, jazz solos, and recap the tune? You don’t seem to do that. 

SN : I can’t do that. I write a melody the first chorus and then I never go back to it. I take those chards and write a new melody or a variation for the last chorus. You’re trying to make something interesting.

RW : That makes me wonder whether the changes come first for you or the melodies?

SN : That’s a good point. If I’m in the car and a melody comes to me, then it’s not from the changes. But I’ve done it both ways. I’ve even taken changes from old standards (like Dizzy Gillespie did) and written new melodies to them.

Basically you analyzed my things very well. I'm still trying to write for the special talents of whatever band I'm writing for and to stay consistent. I'm really happy that people are asking for more.

출처 Inside the scores (Rayburn Wright)