Joel Quarrington ist der wohl bekannteste Quintstimmungs-Bassist der Gegenwart. Als Pionier der Quintstimmung gilt aber gemeinhin der Jazzbassist Red Mitchell, den Quarringon auf seiner Website würdigt. Dort hat er Auszüge aus Gene Lees Buch “Cats of Any Color: Jazz Black and White” (Da Capo press 2001) veröffentlicht. Sehr lesenswert!
“When I made the change in ’66, I took my second wife and her son down to the beach near San Diego and practiced for nine days around the clock over the sound of the surf. There’s a motel that goes right out over the surf.” (Red’s brother has an interesting comment on this transition in Red’s life and work. “By begging, lying, and cajoling,” Gordon said, “Red created a ten-day gap in his schedule, went to that motel, restrung his bass, unlearned the old system, invented a new one, learned it, and went right back into the studios ten days later as if nothing had happened. Astonishing! It’s like learning oboe over the weekend.”)
“Legend always had it,” I told Red, “that you changed the tuning and played a gig two days later.”
“That’s a little exaggerated,” Red said. “It was nine days. I came back to Los Angeles, and the first job I worked with the bass now tuned in fifths was with André Previn. I was playing first bass with sixty-five men at the Sam Goldwyn studio. I figured: Okay, André Previn with a big orchestra. If I can fool André, with his elephant cars, I can fool anybody. I didn’t tell André I was doing anything different. About twenty minutes into the session, I made a gross mistake. I pushed my finger down on the first string, and it would have been right if I’d had a G string. But it was a whole tone high. André stopped the orchestra. He didn’t usually do that. This time he looked over at me and said, ‘Red, really. If it weren’t you, I’d say that note was out of tune.’
“I said, ‘Thank you, André, it was a whole tone out of tune. It will happen again, and I’ll explain to you on the break.’
Ebenfalls lesenswert: Joel Quarrington hat seine täglichen Übungen (Daily Exercises) als PDF und als Apple iBook (inkl. Videomaterial) veröffentlicht – in jeweils einer Version für Quartstimmung und einer für Quintstimmung (wobei letztere 50 Cent günstiger ist als die in Quartstimung 😉