The Bass in Fifths

[Johnny Layton]

Originally Posted by Charles Federle

Almost all of Bradetich's students use all four fingers, but it is not apparent as we use it for exceptions that we need it on like Mozart 39. I think of it as just another tool in the box, though for me it is a bit of a specialty tool.

Hello Charles. I remember reading about Bradetich a while back being taught to play bass from a cellist, and I thought that was pretty cool.

In my Sankey edition Simandl book, Sankey also recommends a 4 finger approach at times.

Have you or any of the others at UNT done any experimenting with 5ths tuned bass? If so, how do you like it?

[Charles Federle]

I can actually only think of one person that has been tuned in 5ths before up here, and he changed back after a while finding it was to much shifting especially for orchestral type things. There could be a few more people that have tried and I just don't know about, after all we have a huge amount of bassits here.

I myself have given some thought to the idea, but I have an extension (which means I can get close to fifths tuning fairly easily) and the tuning would require my bass to get much to bright, using a solo A string on my bass would not blend well within an orchestra section.

However, Jeff and I have talked a bit about 5ths and his conclusion was basically that the important things that we learn about the left hand are even more important with 5ths tunings.

[Johnny Layton]

Yeah as far as Jeff Bradetich's insights with the left hand, no doubt about it in my mind...would likely bring great value regardless of the bass' tuning.