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Fretless: Lines or No Lines?? Which is Least Annoying??

Lines or No Lines, that is the question!

  • Lines

    Votes: 68 44.2%

  • No Lines

    Votes: 86 55.8%
  • Total voters
    154
#61
Well Steve, I agree, that most classical musicians are constanly aware of their intonation. I wouldn't say they struggle, I think that is overstating it for an advanced musician but most definitely have to be acutely aware of intonation.

That is, after all, what makes them advanced players. Bad intonation will get you nowhere.

As far as what is "in tune" that, as you well know is a very subjective question depending for answers on who is doing the listening and judging.

What may well be out of tune to you and me
might sound great to someone else.




All fretless instruments are insanely difficult to keep in tune, not just violins.

Hey if you want lines go ahead and get lines.

Maybe all these symphonic players should have lines put on their fingerboards.

As far as bg body shapes i disagree. My basses always had different shapes. As long as you are intimately familiar with the neck and fingerboard and PRACTICE and LISTEN you will be fine.

Steve, is the goal getting there quickly by using lines as you suggest or is the goal getting there by learning the proper techniques to achieve good intonation ?
 
#62
Originally posted by DonZ
If we apply Lawson's logic here then very few violinists,cellists, violists, and double bassists play in tune above the "12th fret."

I disagree with that sentiment. Apparently Steve has heard a bevy of bass players that should stick to fretted because they are not musically mature enough and their hearing is not well enough developed to play in tune.
Click to expand...

But you're bringing in things that have nothing to do with Steve's point. He said nothing about violinists, cellists, violists, or double bassists, he was talking about fretless electric bassists. He did not say that nobody can play any instrument in tune without lines--in fact, he noted that Michael Manring played with excellent intonation--he said that his overwhelming anecdotal experience had been that he's heard more lined electric bass players playing in tune than unlined electric bass players. Your experience may differ, which is completely cool, but it's only fair to address what was actually said rather than to put words in the man's mouth.

BTW, just as a side note, it's not as if all string players, even famous ones, have flawless intonation. For example, I've heard a number of quite well known jazz bassists who do not have particularly good intonation IMO, especially when playing arco. Maybe some of them could have benefited from lines.;) j/k
 
#63
I know, i brought up those instruments because his comments have implications that can involve all of those instruments.

He is implying whether he knows it or not that fretless players ( i take this a step further by including all fretless players) will for the most part have bad intoantion above a certain position. It's rubbish.
 
#64
Originally posted by DonZ

Steve, is the goal getting there quickly by using lines as you suggest or is the goal getting there by learning the proper techniques to achieve good intonation ?
Click to expand...

I'm not Steve, but surely the two are not mutually exclusive?

Seems to me the goal is simply to get there, period. You may find certain approaches more or less (or not at all) useful at certain stages of the trip, and not everybody's trip will be the same, but if you get there, you get there. Lines are only a tool, but technique as a whole is only a tool. Learning "proper" technique is not an end, it's just something designed to help you achieve your end. Kind of like a hammer. The goal is to pound the nail in; the hammer is just a means of achieving that goal.
 
#66
Originally posted by DonZ
He is implying whether he knows it or not that fretless players ( i take this a step further by including all fretless players) will for the most part have bad intoantion above a certain position. It's rubbish.
Click to expand...

I think you have it wrong. He's saying, if I may interpret, that it's *harder to learn to achieve good intonation* with unlined, and that this presumably is why he sees more unlined players struggling with intonation. That's not at all the same thing as what you're suggesting. You yourself said earlier that it's (obviously) harder to play in tune with a fretless bass of any kind than with a fretted bass. Does that mean fretless bassists won't play in tune? No, it means it's harder to learn to do so, that's all. You can argue that there's an analogy with lined vs unlined. One may simply be harder to learn than the other. If something is harder to learn, it's likely that there will be fewer people who learn it well. It does NOT follow that no one can learn to do things the harder way. Nor, for that matter, does it follow that no one can achieve equally good results by doing things the easier way.
 
#67
Originally posted by DonZ
No, I do not think the two are mutually exclusive.

Lines are a crutch: why learn proper intonation and why develop your musical hearing if you can just jump 50 steps ahead and use lines ?
Click to expand...

Lines a crutch? Why? Really, who cares? Whatever gets you there, gets you there.

You seem to be thinking of "proper intonation" and "musical hearing" as being somehow incompatible with using lines. That's just wrong IMO. Even with lines, you still have to use your musical hearing. They're visual aids, not guarantees of anything. (And don't tell me you never use visual references when you play, especially when you were learning.) You can still play out of tune with lines. As for proper intonation, that means playing in tune, nothing more. The point is to play in tune. Who cares how you get to that point if you get there? There are no extra brownie points for playing without lines. No extra credit.

The whole point of technique is to make it *easier* for you to make music. If something makes it easier for somebody to achieve comparable results with less effort, most of us would consider that a good thing. If it were unequivocally shown that playing unlined produced players with better intonation more efficiently, I for one would be all over it like white on rice. But I have never seen one solitary shred of evidence, anecdotal or toherwise, to suggest that this is reality.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Whether you made it from a cookbook or made up the recipe as you went along doesn't matter.
 
#71
Originally posted by Andy Daventry
Telephones are just a crutch. Truly efficient communicators just go to the window and shout.....

I find lines help a lot above the octave. Below the octave I'm OK with unlined. However, I get more pleasure from playing an unlined board. This is probably just vanity.
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Seems to me there are all sorts of perfectly good reasons for playing unlined. Vanity, looks, pleasure, personal preference--all good. Especially if, as Fetch suggests, chix dig it. (Who knew?)

It's just the not-so-perfectly-good reasons that get up my nose ....
 
#72
Firstly, thanks to the rest of you who've responded, you've saved me much typing...

Originally posted by DonZ
Lines are a crutch: why learn proper intonation and why develop your musical hearing if you can just jump 50 steps ahead and use lines ?
Click to expand...

Is tuning your instrument a crutch? how about playing with your eyes open? what about playing the same instrument for years? or how about keeping the bridge in the same place?

Don, I can't see how lines would be any more of less of a crutch than anything else that helps me to play with as much control and awareness as I can - those are my two goals on any instrument - control and awareness. I can't even begin to see how having lines telling me where the notes is can be a bad thing - it's not like you can 'hear' them, other than I play more in tune with them...

I'm amazed that more orchestral players haven't gone for position markers on their basses - I know Edgar Meyer has them... seems sensible to me.

cheers

Steve
www.stevelawson.net
 
#76
Originally posted by Andy Daventry
Have you known anyone sing AND keep in tune on an unlined fretless?
Click to expand...

Nobody I've personally seen. My first thought was maybe Sting--didn't Sting use to play an unlined P with the Police, at least sometimes? Of course I don't know how well he managed it live, never having seen the Police in concert.

Actually, now that I think of it, I believe Rick Danko used to play a fretless Ampeg bass guitar on occasion, which I'm pretty sure was unlined. If that's what he was playing on Rock of Ages, then he didn't do too badly.
 
#77
Have you known anyone sing AND keep in tune on an unlined fretless?
Click to expand...
Sting did, and very well I might add, with The Police. Though with Andy Summers' chorused effected guitar being the only other instrument I suppose mis-intonation would be more difficult to notice (and proper intonation would be more difficult to master).

I'll tell you, I find the position markers on the side of my unlined fretless work quite well. I don't play above fret 12 very often, but a couple nights ago at practice I surprised myself by intoning well up there.

I remember when I frist brought my bass to my church choir practice our violinist looked at it and scowled. She thought that it would be much harder to intonate on the long 35" scale neck than on her violin (her intonation is excellent BTW). Then I showed her the position markers. :)
 
#78
The "where to put your fingers on a lined board" thing is not as complicated as it sounds. You simply put your fingers where they need to go to make the notes you play in tune.

Lines and side dots are both forms of visual reference. Lines are a much more precise visual reference than side dots alone. Unless you are going to play without looking at the neck at all, why not go with the more precise reference? And if you do play without looking at the neck, I don't see how you could possibly be consistantly in tune. Also, as Steve Lawson has said in other threads, there is often a differance between thinking that you're in tune and actually being in tune.


Originally posted by DonZ

Lines are a crutch: why learn proper intonation and why develop your musical hearing if you can just jump 50 steps ahead and use lines ?
Click to expand...

You do know that Jaco's bass had lines, don't you? Do you think his ear would be better if he played an unlined fretless? Do you think it needed to be better?
 
#79
Originally posted by Steve Lawson


Well, Don, it depends how you define 'in tune' - what is in tune enough. Every classical string player that I know struggles to some degree with intonation. Almost all of the 'Grade 8' violinists that I know don't have particularly consistent intonation up the top of the neck. Violin is an insanely difficult instrument to develop real control over.

However, on classical string instruments, your body position, the shape of the instrument and often the figuring in the wood give you some indications of where certain notes are. You muscle memory does the rest. Most classical players that I know adopt exactly the same playing position each time they play. That's not true of the electric bassists that I know. Given that many of the different approaches to playing bass require different playing positions, and unlike violins, violas and cellos, the shape of the instrument varies hugely from one make to another. If you've got two different basses of different makes, then you may end up with two different sets of egonomic conditions (not sure if that's a real phrase but still, it'll do for now... ;) ).

Most of the classical string players I know (so therefor this is anecdotal evidence, but probably vaguely accurate, at least for string players in the UK) spend a heck of a lot of time working on their intonation. They have to, to develop the muscle memory. Same goes for the electric bassists that I know who play unlined fretless instruments. I'd humbly suggest that I can get to a similar level of intonation accuracy a lot quicker by using my muscle memory, my ears and my eyes, using the reference of the lines. the wood on the fingerboard of my bass isn't particularly figured, so I can't use lines in the grain for reference. It's got dots along the side, but they tend to disappear in low light (I suppose I could get LEDs fitted...) So I wouldn't have much in the way of reference points to get my hands in place before I start. So I have lines. Lines that act as a guide, lines that I can learn to play ahead of or behind. All that matters is what comes out of the speakers, ultimately (or off the soundboard if you're playing acoustically... ;) )

Again, this is all based on my own experience and on my observations of fellow pros, students and players that I've watched - the ones who used lines were more consistently in tune. If the way you conceive of your music requires you to play an unmarked instrument and to put in the extra practice required to play without lines, that's great. As for me, I'm going to get lines on my Cello as soon as I get round to it as well... I see no advantage in not having them, and plenty of situations where they would prove very useful.

cheers

Steve
www.stevelawson.net
Click to expand...

I agree to some extent, as I have heard many unlined fretless players with poor intonation.

But I would like to ask a question?

If you get to rely on the lines for correct intonation - what do you do when you are sight-reading a part or just following a chord chart?

Where do you look?

So - this happened to me a lot at Jazz Summerschool this year - playing from chord charts all the time and many written bass parts.

So - when playing my EUB, I have been looking at the position dots a lot as there is no physical reference - but then I am in trouble when I have to look at the music - I can't look at both!:hmm:

I found that over the week of the course, I was just having to look at the music and rely on my ears - and the more I did it, the easier it got.

So - if I get to rely on the position markers, then I am really struggling when I have to read music,charts etc. - so the only way forward I can see is to be able to intonate without looking at these.... can you suggest any alternative? I'm all for an easy life! ;)
 
#80
I really love my unlined Overwater, but I have had some nightmares with poor stage lighting combined with difficult acoustics, and let me tell you I didn't sound good those gigs. :)

If I buy another fretless it will have lines, this is what I would play live where I need all the intonation help I can get. The unlined I would use under more controlled conditions and for my own enjoyment and satisfaction. I still believe there is a psychological difference between lines and no lines, I somehow feel more committed and inspired with an unlined fretboard, and it sure looks better. I'm however swinging towards the more pragmatic stance that what's important in the end is sound and intonation rather than looks, so...
 

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