smooth, noiseless slides on fretted bass?

[sumpitan]

I love the style of the melodic bass masters of the seventies like Dee Murray and John Deacon. Among other techniques, they use downward slides on many classics (Bohemian Rhapsody, Candle in the Wind etc.) using their staple Jazzes / Precisions, ie. fretted basses with roundwound strings (I think). But whenever I try to emulate my heroes and make the same tasty slides, I get fret noise: rattle and squeaks.

How the h..l am I supposed to make descending slides from one note to another that are smooth and without extraneous noise, short of switching to a fretless?

[PrecisionBass]

Lowering your action should work with a fretted. I never get these problems, and my action is INCREDIBLY low, just short of having it so low where it hits frets when you play it open

[bassbrad]

To me it's all about having the right touch and an oldish set of strings.

[DemoEtc]

If pluck the top note strongly enough it'll sometimes be loud enough as you start to slide down to cover noise.

Sometimes not.

If you press too lightly you get the scratch from the roundwounds. If you press to hard you sometimes wind up with fret click as you descend. There's a middle pressure somewhere in there.

Also, sometimes it helps to angle the fingers of your fingering hand back toward the bridge slightly so when you draw your finger down the string it's more like a trailing edge sort of thing down the string. Your finger tip is no longer at a straight angle to the direction of the string. And it also helps a bit if you do the slide with another, less callused part of the fingertip, like the pad instead of the tip, or even the side of the second finger joint.

[JustOpenYourMind]

Are you talking playing alone in your bedroom or playing with a band?
I'm sure if you were isolating the bass tracks from any of those song you would hear some fretnoise.

There is really no way around it with rounds. If you play flats you'll have no fretnoise at all even playing alone. but you'll have to deal with a significantly darker sound

[Chad.mundt]

Something that many of the studio cats do it they play with flatwounds. This removes much of the squeek. It is very likely that your heroes do the same. That aside, there is something to be said about LH accuracy. If, in your slides, you are even a few millimeters off of being in the fret's sweet spot, you'll get "popcorn" bass. Try to work more sliding shifts into your practice sessions.

Example:

-5===>10===>5--
------------------
------------------
------------------ etc.

Try to always put your finger directly behind the fret whenever you play anything.

[theshadow2001]

you could also have a bad bass that needs a setup

[Audiophage]

Good touch is part of it, but a lot of that sound disappears in the mix with a band. Probably if you hear the bass track isolated you'll hear some of that extraneous noise.

[JimmyM]

I thought Dee Murray and John Deacon both used flats. Flats will cut down on noise. But bass is just a noisy instrument, and you have to accept a squeak or a click now and then. With a band, it's not nearly as bad sounding as it is by yourself.