Playing fretless excusively

[sir juice]

This is mainly directed to Michael but if anyone else with fretless experience (including Steve) wants to chip in please feel free.

I love my fretless more than anything and would like to be able to play it excusively at some point in the future. The fretless is really important for me sounding like me especially in solos and walking (have spent many hours studying great double bassists and slide guitar players, and have stolen far too many licks).

What I feel I need to achieve before I can retire my fretted instrument is eliminating the "mwah" sound when I see it to be necessary. I've done everything I can think of in terms of setup (higher action, fairly high tension flatwound strings etc.) but regardless of a deliberately lack of vibrato at points it still ends up coming through.

Michael: as someone who plays fretless excusively yourself, what methods have you discovered to help eliminate the arcotypical fretless sound?

ps. it is possible - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KIswJS6UZs

Thanks

edit: (mainly for mods) I've posted this in the General Instruction forum to get as many answers as possible

[lefty007]

I think the secret that Willis has is the palm-muting and notice how he's using very short notes, not the letting the mwah even develop.

[jgroh]

I had to raise my action as well or it was just mwahh all day without trying. Im a fairly new fretless player (but not new bass player) so Im sure my technique is contributing as well, but since I raised the action, it has helped immensely! And you are right OP, I want to play the fretless all the time too and the key for me is to make it sound less like a fretless most of the time.

[sir juice]

What's interesting is, (using Gary Willis as an example again) is that I've heard that he strives to have his action as low as possible as do I (although mine's really high at the moment).

What I'm trying to do at the moment is keeping it high to eliminate mwah, then slowly lowering it as I play more, a very small amount in weekly incriments, and hopefully by the end, I'll be able to have the same control over the tone that I do now, but it'll feel nice too

[rythmicillusion]

For your reference and study purposes, James Genus is another cat that is pretty amazing at achieving a non "mwah" tone on the fretless electric. He plays fretted electric and upright quite a bit, which may well be part of his formula.

I can't find any specific video footage our audio clippage of this phenomenon on the web as of yet, but here might be a place to start...

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm...ndID=249077010

...and enjoy the hunt.

[jtallent]

I'm sure you've played around with these things already since it sounds as if you've been experimenting a lot but for me I simply use the neck p/u and the mwah practically disappears. If I roll to the bridge pickup exclusively I get it back. It's kind of funny because I typically have the opposite problem where I want more of it at times and I can't quite get enough, even with just the bridge p/u. It could also possibly be the instrument itself, with wood and electronics being the main ingredients effecting your outcome. I just noticed that you string one of your basses starting with D as your lowest string, I wonder if that makes it more prominent.

[ghiadub]

Pay attention to where you are fingering with your picking hand and how hard you are digging in.

For my $.02, this is where the "mwah" happens or does not happen.

If I play near the bridge and play with a light touch I get very little mwah, if I dig in close to the neck, I get tons of it. YMMV.

[MegaBassET]

Hi everybody.

I asked similar questions to MM last here during a training session.

He told me that he uses the fretted as well as the fretless: there are things that you simply cannot do on the fretless.

He carries around his ZON headless and groove on that axe, normally.

Cheers, Ettore