How hard is fretless?

[ba$$player]

Ok wow lots of posts, thanks for all the tips. Now to clear things up a little. I have 3 basses and the one I am defretting is one I don't play, and my buddy is doing it for free. He is a talented carpenter and is filling the fret lines with alder. Its a rosewood board and he is going to epoxy it after lots of sanding.

[daddy like]

I have had many fretless basses and considering having a Marleaux fretless custom made since I sold my Roscoe 6 fretless. If you play on dark stages its a bit harder. If you only have 1 bass it may be a mistake for you personally to make it fretless. I suggest getting a cheap one under 1000.00 and see if you like it. if you dont like it, sell it. if you make yours fretless the side dots will not be AT the frets.

[MD]

Originally Posted by ba$$player

Ok wow lots of posts, thanks for all the tips. Now to clear things up a little. I have 3 basses and the one I am defretting is one I don't play, and my buddy is doing it for free. He is a talented carpenter and is filling the fret lines with alder. Its a rosewood board and he is going to epoxy it after lots of sanding.

Good luck with the project. Sound clips when done.
And remember... no pics, no fretless.

[khutch]

Originally Posted by unclejane

No you don't. That's why they're good - their intonation control is so good it just sounds like they hit it perfectly every time.
Strange but true....

Actually if you listen very carefully and for a long enough time you can hear an occasional missed note. They aren't any better at covering them up than any of us are. The reason you don't hear many missed notes is that they don't miss very often. There's not much space between "frets" on a violin, if you don't hit a note right you are going to be way off, much too far to disguise.

Ken

[BawanaRik]

How important is the playing in tune thing. I tend to be within a nickel but sometime I hit a note so wrong I can tell it's wrong.

Love the feel. It's the way bass was made to be played.

Originally Posted by Phalex

I find fretless to be relatively easy, tons of fun, and very unforgiving.

I liken it to the dirt track racing of bass. You just kinda slide around real fast! It's a ton of fun, but if you're not playing in tune, you really don't have much of a safety net.

[JoeWPgh]

To me, the 2 key things to playing a fretless are your ears and your vibrato. If you clearly hear the note in your head, your fingers will get you close enough to cover it with proper vibrato

[BawanaRik]

Bill Wyman to Jaco and beyond.

Not too narrow.

Originally Posted by Frenchy-Lefty

I own quite a few instruments including a fretless. Fretless is awesome but you can't play quite a few styles of music on it. It has a norrow and specific range of utilization. I strongly recommend to to keep your fretted bass and get a cheap fretless. Also it will be a lot harder to sell your bass once it is defretted.

[ba$$player]

Ok so I think I have a good idea where to start as far as playing. I'm gonna start by playing with some tunes I love and work on intonation and hand control. So how bout some explanations about different string types for fless. Nylon tapewound groundwound flatwound. I don't know where to start. Any recommendations?

[Staccato]

How tough is it? Take a month, and you'll be invested and performing comfortably (that's my take).

Originally Posted by SteveC

Don't defret your bass. Get an inexpensive fretless.

Maybe. I found a great defret instrument in a music store (with new GHS tape strings).

It's a 5 string Peavey Millennium BXP, and a keeper!

[BawanaRik]

While the TI flats will do what you want many recommend the Rotosound Nickels.

The TIs may be 70 or 80 buck but will last forever.

Originally Posted by ba$$player

Ok so I think I have a good idea where to start as far as playing. I'm gonna start by playing with some tunes I love and work on intonation and hand control. So how bout some explanations about different string types for fless. Nylon tapewound groundwound flatwound. I don't know where to start. Any recommendations?

[sugarsand]

You have to choose your notes and if you aren't sure, have a good way out, make a passing note, the whole notes need to be a good note. You just listen and phrase it the way it sounds best. I thought I would never go back to frets, now after 8 yrs of fretless I got a new fretted bass I like, so now I like my fretted Ric. It's good training either way.

[ba$$player]

Do any of you fless players use round wound strings? If so why, and how well do they work?

[JoeWPgh]

Round wound strings lend themselves the 'Jaco' sound. But they will chew up your fingerboard.

[AltGrendel]

Originally Posted by ba$$player

Do any of you fless players use round wound strings? If so why, and how well do they work?

I use half rounds, gives me a bit of snap that I like and doesn't chew up the fingerboard.

[Engine207]

Some thoughts on fretless...

For me the way to learn is immersion. Just as I learned to get comfortable with a 5-string, it was all about reps. I put away my fretted basses and just played everything on fretless, until I felt confident enough to go back and forth. At first, it sounded like I was just playing fretted, but I gradually mixed in some techniques (sparingly used slides, harmonics, vibrato, etc.) that made the bass really sing.

As far as lined vs. unlined, I started with a Squier VM, and despite being a petty nice bass for $175, the lines were messing me up. Like many have said, it's really a personal preference. I'll admit, I use my eyes more than I should... but on a fretted bass, I play between the frets. If you do that with a lined fretless, you'll always be a little flat, because the note is on the fret line. I just couldn't get my fingers to buy off on that. The dots on an unlined neck are right where the note is, so I don't get messed up.

I disagree with the comments about the limited use of fretless. The band I'm in plays lots of classic and hard rock, and depending on which songs and how I play...I can use it on anything. I also prefer rounds or half-rounds, but since my fingerboard is maple, I had it epoxied to minimize the wear.

Most importantly, have fun and experiment. Check out different fretless players. Tony Franklin is my personal favorite. Get a teacher who is trained in upright (or fretless electric if you can find one).

[xxfaux_punkxx]

I had a Crate Electra that I turned fretless. Its really not hard to defret, just takes a steady hand and the right tools. Filed a flat head as thin as I could get it and used it pop up a corner, than needle nose to gently pull the fret out. I filled in the lines with puddy and sanded it all smooth and purty.

That being said I HATED the fretless feel. Even on the familiar bass things felt off in the way the strings moved. After two weeks I sold the body and kept the neck as a skullcracker.

As far as playability it wasn't difficult. It just required more concentration, and a proper setup.

[spade2you]

Originally Posted by ba$$player

Do any of you fless players use round wound strings? If so why, and how well do they work?

The subject of strings, fingerboard, tone, and wear are another debate, much like the lined vs. unlined debate.

I currently have a roundwound with Dymondwood fingerboard, rounds on polyester, rounds on stabilized ebony, and LaBella tapewounds on ebony and Brazilian rosewood. I used to have a rounds on ebony 5er that I recently sold.

I think wear is exaggerated on both ends. Some guys will tell ya that barbed wire strings on a balsa wood fingerboard will last forever while others will say rounds on ebony will destroy it soon. Naturally, both extremes are wrong. Another thing to keep in mind is that many opinions are being offered by people who might have a fretless that they use occasionally.

Ultimately, it depends on the sound you want, your technique, but most importantly how much you play it.

[unclejane]

Originally Posted by khutch

Actually if you listen very carefully and for a long enough time you can hear an occasional missed note. They aren't any better at covering them up than any of us are. The reason you don't hear many missed notes is that they don't miss very often. There's not much space between "frets" on a violin, if you don't hit a note right you are going to be way off, much too far to disguise.

Ken

Actually, you'll hear more than the occasional "missed" note, you'll hear a whole bunch of them. They _are_ much better at covering it up than the rest of us, which is why you have to listen so close to detect it.

But that's the essence of playing an FL instrument as I've said - a good player listens and corrects as the _primary_ skill. They do it skillfully enough to make it sound like it's in tune all the time (when that's the goal).

We as listeners aren't perfect either and we're easily fooled when a skilled player makes those small corrections to intonation into thinking (s)he's landing on the note perfectly. And that's a good thing, that's how music is possible on instruments without fixed intonation like FL basses, violins, etc. That's what you want to achieve.

My point is, on an FL instrument it's impossible to hit the note perfectly intonated all the time. That's a myth. And, not meaning to be contrary to your earlier statement, it's actually a poor practice regime to try to do this. It's not an achievable or even a desirable goal.

Instead, you have to learn to listen and correct. That's the goal to work for on a fretless instrument.

Watch some of Steve Bailey's videos on the topic of learning FL. He devotes a large amount of time to teaching listen&correct with lots of exercises for this. He doesn't teach land on the note exactly every time, that's not what the FL is all about (he says otherwise we'd just all play fretted!).

PS: here's one on youtube that illustrates how he teaches this skill; notice virtually the entire spine of his teaching is intonation control, not simply landing in the right place:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIp3hyVJva0

PPS: I've attached the tail end of a song I did called "hoops" a few years ago. This was shortly after I'd discovered Steve Bailey and started working on his exercises. This is with my old Gibson Tobias 6 string FL (which was thankfully stolen out of my apt a year later, may it R.I.P.).

I'm what I'd classify as a mediocre-to-acceptable FL player - notice you can hear that I'm off initially almost everywhere, but even _I_ can almost -ish simulate sounding like I'm in tune by correcting. At least in many places. Lots of places I'm just slap off lol.

Contrast this with a truly good and skilled FL player, and it's virtually impossible to tell that they're not quite landing exactly on it...

LS

[unclejane]

Originally Posted by spade2you

The subject of strings, fingerboard, tone, and wear are another debate, much like the lined vs. unlined debate.

I currently have a roundwound with Dymondwood fingerboard, rounds on polyester, rounds on stabilized ebony, and LaBella tapewounds on ebony and Brazilian rosewood. I used to have a rounds on ebony 5er that I recently sold.

I think wear is exaggerated on both ends. Some guys will tell ya that barbed wire strings on a balsa wood fingerboard will last forever while others will say rounds on ebony will destroy it soon. Naturally, both extremes are wrong. Another thing to keep in mind is that many opinions are being offered by people who might have a fretless that they use occasionally.

Ultimately, it depends on the sound you want, your technique, but most importantly how much you play it.

I'm with Spade on this one also.

Once the strings are dead, I've found very little difference between rounds and flats. I have found that flats can give a little bit of a rubber-band-on-a-washtub tone to my L2K over a good set of dead rounds. But it's not enough to make me take these Chromes off my L2K, since I'm too lazy and cheap to go get another set of strings for it.

I use rounds exclusively on my Bunny. The only wear I've noticed on the board is a little bit of grooving and that's about it after a year or so of constant playing.

Over the long term, rounds will give a hair bit more wear than flats will but especially with ebony, it'll still take a long time before you'll have to actually dress the fingerboard. So not a huge deal.

Rounds will muuaaah slightly more than flats, but that's more a function of the hardness of the fingerboard than anything else. Eg. an epoxy coated board will be really whiney. A wooden board will reduce that quite a bit. I prefer little to no muuaaah since I like to have a fretted tone or as close to it as I can get, so I avoid finished boards. Ebony seems to give a good mix between whine and just plain old clear notes.

LS

[polyrhythmia]

I suspect that fretless instruments are playable at all is that the fingers are not sharp points, but rather are soft and have width to them. I found fretless bass is quite easy to intonate even up to, say, the 18th position.