First day with my fretless

[Depth_Charge]

I got my fretless Fender P yesterday and every chance I get, I'm playing it. The kids are inside now, so it's back in it's case and put away so I'm talkbassing about it instead

First, I learned that my note placement doesn't suck as much as I first thought it would. I'm often just off the mark on finding the right notes. There's a few slower songs or songs I'm very familiar that transferred fine, which was a pleasant surprise too.

Scales are more challening now, since I only started paying attention to them recently

I also found that my ear isn't as bad as I thought it was...a lot of times I can tell when I play the wrong notes on songs I'm familiar with. And finding the right ones was sometimes easier than on my fretted basses. Maybe the ability to slide up and down the string to find the note helps some...but yes, on the whole my intial impression is it's definately a more ear reliant instrument which can only help develop my ear.

Those slides all the way up or all the way down (or both) sound awesome too!!! Completely musically unnecessary...but awesome sounding nonetheless

I'm almost feeling like there is less restriction with a fretless, , like it's a "free-er" instrument if you can understand that. I'm not really sure how to describe it yet, but to me it just feels more smooth moving around the neck.

It's definately a more eccentric instrument, or at least to me it is.

And last of all, I really like playing this bass. I love the sound and quality of construction of this bass and am really looking forward to progressing with it...

Thanks for reading the kids just went outside I might be able to squeeze a few minutes in on it...

[CTbass&birdsong]

+1000 glad your enjoying it... I feel the same way....

[Bassist4Life]

Congrats! Fretless is a lot of fun. It's kind of like driving a standard after you've driven an automatic transmission (if that makes sense).

If you get an opportunity, and you have the gear, record yourself playing a scale and then harmonize with yourself. Lots of fun!

Enjoy.

Joe

[tplyons]

Yep, I can't put down my fretlesses. I went without a fretless for a week and was missing it after an hour. Yep, it's addictive.

[BassChuck]

It is cool isn't it? Something I've found is that practice on the fretless makes my fretted playing better. After you get to hitting the mark with the fretless, there is no fret noise when you play fretted.
I agree though with so many fretless posts here on TB that they are really two different instruments with strengths and weaknesses of their own. Probably its true that a 'well dressed bass player' can play either.