Fretless out of tune?

[viper4000]

I'll +1 to most of what has been said.

I played fretless exclusively for 5-6 years. In the learning phase, I too noticed you had to be very close to where the fret should be (proper intonation, standard tuning, etc). When I transitioned back to a fretted bass, I found my technique was better than before. Previously, on a fretted bass, my fingers would land randomly between the frets. I made music, so I thought I was fine. After the fretless work, I now know my technique is much better and my notes are cleaner regardless of which type of fingerboard I am using.

Good Luck OP

 

[SteveCS]

OK, I saw many mentions of setting intonation. I have a slightly different take, which my teacher imparted to me. Set your intonation by comparing the harmonic at the 12th fret with the fretted note, but put your finger right on the fret line so it's in the middle of your finger. Then you use the same method for all the other notes, right on the fret line.

He also mentioned the dot markers should be between the frets, because they'll be in the same relative position on fretted vs. fretless.

Tell your teacher s/he is wrong on both counts...

 

[Deleted member 165050]

Reading through this it occurs to me that my cello has neither lines nor dots. You learn the positions through playing scales and arpeggios, and your ears tell you if your intonation is good or not.

 

[eKay]

Tell your teacher s/he is wrong on both counts...

Thanks for the informative reply. It works well enough for me.

 

[SteveCS]

Thanks for the informative reply. It works well enough for me.

I'm sorry but its misinformation such as your teacher has given you that gives rise to threads like this, over and over.
1: intonate where the string just touches the line. No line? Set between the double-dot.
2: Play where the string just touches the line. No line? The side dots are where the line would be, NOT in between.
Above all, play with your ears and not your eyes.
None of the above is IMHO.

 

[Bryan R. Tyler]

Reading through this it occurs to me that my cello has neither lines nor dots. You learn the positions through playing scales and arpeggios, and your ears tell you if your intonation is good or not.

It's a great plan if you want the audience to hear a bunch of out of tune notes being slid into proper pitch

The goal is to play in tune. Anything that helps get you there is a good thing, whether it be ears, dots, lines, scratch and sniff fret position markers, or any combination of them.

 

[radioripster]

Everyone's fingers are a little different and of course, practice makes perfect..well, there's really no absolute perfect with a fretless, but that's part of its charm.

What I've learned over the years with a fretless is learning to feel the bones in my fingers and where they are pressing on the fingerboard not just finger position..to me that's how I learned to play more in tune. The skin on your fingers can move around but the bone is doing the work.

Someone may have pointed that out and maybe my thoughts on it sound odd, but think about it.

The way your hand twists around in positions and your fingers bending, there's variables there.

Take all this as you want, but it works for me.

Play Paul Simon's "Graceland" and that little lick in the chorus is what caught my attention to my thinking on this many years ago. Visually, it appeared as I was playing out of tune but when I noticed where my finger's bones were actually applying the pressure, it was right on.

Maybe I play it weird..I don't know, but I play in tune pretty well for the odd and kinda fast lick that it is.

Be nice....

 

[eKay]

I'm sorry but its misinformation such as your teacher has given you that gives rise to threads like this, over and over.
1: intonate where the string just touches the line. No line? Set between the double-dot.
2: Play where the string just touches the line. No line? The side dots are where the line would be, NOT in between.
Above all, play with your ears and not your eyes.
None of the above is IMHO.

So... it sounds like you agree on intonating where the string touches the line. But not about the side dots? I thought we were talking about a lined fretless here, in which case I'd expect the dots to be between the lines, as on a fretted bass. Don't mean to argue, just trying to clarify.

 

[Deleted member 165050]

It's a great plan if you want the audience to hear a bunch of out of tune notes being slid into proper pitch

The goal is to play in tune. Anything that helps get you there is a good thing, whether it be ears, dots, lines, scratch and sniff fret position markers, or any combination of them.

All the orchestral players I know, violinists, cellists and bassists, play fretless instruments that have no markers of any sort and all manage to play consistently in tune... if you practice scales and arpeggios enough your fingers know where to go. And trying to decide if it's you playing out of tune when you are surrounded by identical instruments means you can't play by ear either! You just have to get that lizard brain instinctive finger placement right through practice... good practice for fretless bass - play two-octave arpeggios with your eyes shut

 

[radioripster]

All the orchestral players I know, violinists, cellists and bassists, play fretless instruments that have no markers of any sort and all manage to play consistently in tune... if you practice scales and arpeggios enough your fingers know where to go. And trying to decide if it's you playing out of tune when you are surrounded by identical instruments means you can't play by ear either! You just have to get that lizard brain instinctive finger placement right through practice... good practice for fretless bass - play two-octave arpeggios with your eyes shut

You're absolutely right..I turn the lights off sometimes too and play.

" lizard brain instinctive finger placement" heh.

 

[Bryan R. Tyler]

All the orchestral players I know, violinists, cellists and bassists, play fretless instruments that have no markers of any sort and all manage to play consistently in tune... if you practice scales and arpeggios enough your fingers know where to go. And trying to decide if it's you playing out of tune when you are surrounded by identical instruments means you can't play by ear either! You just have to get that lizard brain instinctive finger placement right through practice... good practice for fretless bass - play two-octave arpeggios with your eyes shut

Fretless electric is different than nearly all of those instruments- it's too long to have hand positions for most of the length and has a highly finished neck with no physical landmarks. It is also a much more appropriate instrument to use lines and dots on; they simply aren't as useful on most orchestral instruments due to the way they are held. Parallax makes them both inaccurate and difficult to see, which is not the case with our instrument.

Improving muscle memory is also expedited by using hand eye coordination. No part of your body lives in isolation from any other part- more cues from using multiple senses will get you there faster. I've also done the whole "play in the dark" thing as many of us did when first playing fretless. If you play in the dark regularly live (as some do in dark bars) it can be a good exercise, otherwise I think it's not being as practical with your practice as you could be. The best way to get good at something is to do the actual thing. Practice as close to how you would be playing live or recording as you possibly can, which generally means having some light. Depriving yourself of your other senses is going to slow your muscle memory and distract you by putting you in an unnatural playing position- it's better to practice as you normally would any other time and focus on the music instead.

And always remember that just because something is a tradition doesn't mean it's the best way to do something. Most of those orchestras are playing music by guys who used chamber pots and were bled by unwashed doctors when sick too

 

[Deleted member 165050]

Fretless electric is different than nearly all of those instruments- it's too long to have hand positions for most of the length and has a highly finished neck with no physical landmarks. It is also a much more appropriate instrument to use lines and dots on; they simply aren't as useful on most orchestral instruments due to the way they are held. Parallax makes them both inaccurate and difficult to see, which is not the case with our instrument.

Im guessing you've never played an NS Design EUB? They have dots, lots of dots in fact, maybe too many! I guess we'll have to agree to differ about the rest, as I play positions on bass guitar...

 

[Bryan R. Tyler]

Im guessing you've never played an NS Design EUB? They have dots, lots of dots in fact, maybe too many! I guess we'll have to agree to differ about the rest, as I play positions on bass guitar...

I haven't (that I remember anyway), but I've seen and heard quite a few- they're surprisingly not very upright-y sounding. More like am excellent fretless than an upright. Edgar Meyer has dots on his upright too. They're just not nearly as useful as dots on an instrument that is perpendicular to your eyeline.

 

[Deleted member 165050]

The NS CR4M I had sounded very much like one of my ZON fretless basses so I sold it, no point in going through all the trouble of carting it around.

As to Edgar Meyer, HE KNOWS WHAT THE YELLOW LIGHT MEANS.

My NS NXT doesn't really sound much like either a fretless bass guitar or an acoustic upright, different to my old NS CR5M though as it's piezo only... I like the big sound from the longer scale even if I don't use it much these days. I'm never in tune on it of course

 

[brianrost]

How do you practice along to the radio if the songs aren't A440? Do you re-tune your bass during the first verse and then join in on the second verse, or something like that? Do you play out of tune with the song and tolerate the sonic clash? Or do you think playing along to the radio is not a useful exercise? Not trying to be argumentative; genuinely curious your opinion as I know you are an experienced player.

Late answer:

I'll play along on a fretted bass and live with the minor tuning clashes, no time to retune against the radio unless the song is really long! If playing to a CD, tape, LP, etc. I'll retune if needed.

Maybe it's just me, but the intonation feedback loop of ear, hand and brain gets really messed up when I'm trying to make minor pitch corrections on the fly, especially if I'm still trying to find the notes. I.e. did I just play the wrong note or did I play the right note only out of tune?

 

[Watchootognbout]

All the orchestral players I know, violinists, cellists and bassists, play fretless instruments that have no markers of any sort and all manage to play consistently in tune... if you practice scales and arpeggios enough your fingers know where to go. And trying to decide if it's you playing out of tune when you are surrounded by identical instruments means you can't play by ear either! You just have to get that lizard brain instinctive finger placement right through practice... good practice for fretless bass - play two-octave arpeggios with your eyes shut

Orchestral violinists, cellists and bassists also constantly use vibrato.
Why is that?
Is it because a non-vibrato note can betray the fact that they are not all in exact tune with each other?

 

[SteveCS]

Orchestral violinists, cellists and bassists also constantly use vibrato.
Why is that?
Is it because a non-vibrato note can betray the fact that they are not all in exact tune with each other?

Emphatically not. Vibrato is an expressive tool. In examinations, marks are lost for use of vibrato, glissando and the like in the technical elements such as scales and arpeggios. I don't believe many fretless bassists that consider themselves advanced have anything like the level of control over vibrato that even intermediate cellists have

 

[Watchootognbout]

Emphatically not. Vibrato is an expressive tool. In examinations, marks are lost for use of vibrato, glissando and the like in the technical elements such as scales and arpeggios. I don't believe many fretless bassists that consider themselves advanced have anything like the level of control over vibrato that even intermediate cellists have

It would be quite odd for a fretless bass player to vibrato as much as a classical cellist.
Me thinks.

 

[bassbenj]

I haven't (that I remember anyway), but I've seen and heard quite a few- they're surprisingly not very upright-y sounding. More like am excellent fretless than an upright. Edgar Meyer has dots on his upright too. They're just not nearly as useful as dots on an instrument that is perpendicular to your eyeline.

There is a difference between upright and bass guitar in that landmarks you can use for the positions are few and far between on the bass guitar. Hence side dots take the place of the landmarks indicating the various positions. I find that careful tuning and intonation setup to 12th fret is more important than a fretless newbie might think, I do an intonation setup by carefully tuning to pitch and using a credit card edge to "finger" the 12th fret note exactly on the line or between the two dots.

Then when the bass is properly set up and tuned it can be very enlightening for the fretless beginner to play various notes into a decent tuning meter. Such will quickly show where your fingers must be for notes as well as natural variations between them.

 

[SteveCS]

It would be quite odd for a fretless bass player to vibrato as much as a classical cellist.
Me thinks.

In the 'Cello section perhaps, but it is not a default approach. As for the soloists, vibrato is a part of the voice but again is not the default, at least not at the highest level. Vibrato to cover poor intonation is not tolerated at any level beyond beginners, who are not taught it in the first place. Incidentally, I did not question the amount, but the level of control, which I believe based on experience to be incomparable in the majority of cases.