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How Do Un-fretted Instruments Work?

#42
carl h. said:
Violins will never have frets, just like bassoons.

Whole thing is dumb.
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Au Contraire, Mon Frère!
 
#45
carl h. said:
What about the other unfretted instruments, like trombones, flutes and bassoons? They've never had frets either.

Calling the "violin" family unfretted is missing the mark as they were never intended to be fretted.
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If you do a quick research you'll find that some DB had "fret" at one point in their life, same for violin. But it was dismiss quite fast. There is a short time where DB had only 3 strings ... then Wagner asked for a huge DB ... at first it was played by 2 player but soon they had a mechanism similar to frets. The instrument could only play a few different notes.
 
#52
I think it is likely that unfretted instruments are older than fretted. I also think it is unlikely that they are far older however. It isn't much of a leap from unfretted to fretted and the advantages when trying to teach a beginner are obvious. Some modern violin family teachers will put tape markers on the fingerboards of beginner's instruments in a few places to help them get started with finding the notes. I'd be surprised if the first experiments with "frets" occurred more than a year after the invention of the first stringed instrument with a fingerboard for stopping the notes. That event is lost in the mists of ancient prehistory, we can never know when and where these things were first invented. We can go back to around 3000 BC however, thanks to the Mesopotamian love of music and their invention of writing. There is a fascinating website called Ancient Lyre which has [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] where you can find this quotation from an old clay tablet written in cuneiform, the writing depicted in my avatar:

The long-necked lute has a history even more ancient than that of the lyre! It seems to have first appeared in Sumer, in ancient Mesopotamia, as early as 3500BCE...
"When I fix the frets on the lute, which enraptures my heart, I never damage its neck; I have devised rules for raising and lowering its intervals."
(Invalid Link Removed)

Frets were not always bits of wire embedded in the fingerboard. On the viola da gamba family of instruments they were bits of gut strings tied around the neck and they could be moved to tune the instrument for different keys in the days before the even tempered scale. So even old instruments that appear not to have frets may have been played fretted. If the instrument is old enough for the strings to have decayed to dust any gut frets it might have had at one time would likewise be dust. On the other hand when ancient King Culgi boasts about his skill at fixing frets without damaging the neck you get the feeling he was talking about wire frets since tied on gut frets would hardly damage a neck. In any event frets are very, very old and there is no point to beating one another up over which came first, fretted or fretless. Some of the very earliest stringed instruments we have concrete evidence for were fretted. If you have any familiarity with music from 3000 BC you know that music has changed far more than frets since that time!

In the most general definition of the word most modern instruments are "fretted" or more properly "stopped": they will only sound notes from of a collection of preset notes defined when the instrument was constructed. Bassoons have the equivalent of frets, slide trombones do not, valved trombones do!
 
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#54
khutch said:
I think it is likely that unfretted instruments are older than fretted. I also think it is unlikely that they are far older however. It isn't much of a leap from unfretted to fretted and the advantages when trying to teach a beginner are obvious. Some modern violin family teachers will put tape markers on the fingerboards of beginner's instruments in a few places to help them get started with finding the notes. I'd be surprised if the first experiments with "frets" occurred more than a year after the invention of the first stringed instrument with a fingerboard for stopping the notes. That event is lost in the mists of ancient prehistory, we can never know when and where these things were first invented. We can go back to around 3000 BC however, thanks to the Mesopotamian love of music and their invention of writing. There is a fascinating website called Ancient Lyre which has [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] where you can find this quotation from an old clay tablet written in cuneiform, the writing depicted in my avatar:

The long-necked lute has a history even more ancient than that of the lyre! It seems to have first appeared in Sumer, in ancient Mesopotamia, as early as 3500BCE...
"When I fix the frets on the lute, which enraptures my heart, I never damage its neck; I have devised rules for raising and lowering its intervals."
(Invalid Link Removed)

Frets were not always bits of wire embedded in the fingerboard. On the viola da gamba family of instruments they were bits of gut strings tied around the neck and they could be moved to tune the instrument for different keys in the days before the even tempered scale. So even old instruments that appear not to have frets may have been played fretted. If the instrument is old enough for the strings to have decayed to dust any gut frets it might have had at one time would likewise be dust. On the other hand when ancient King Culgi boasts about his skill at fixing frets without damaging the neck you get the feeling he was talking about wire frets since tied on gut frets would hardly damage a neck. In any event frets are very, very old and there is no point to beating one another up over which came first, fretted or fretless. Some of the very earliest stringed instruments we have concrete evidence for were fretted. If you have any familiarity with music from 3000 BC you know that music has changed far more than frets since that time!

In the most general definition of the word most modern instruments are "fretted" or more properly "stopped": they will only sound notes from of a collection of preset notes defined when the instrument was constructed. Bassoons have the equivalent of frets, slide trombones do not, valved trombones do!
Click to expand...

I do love it when you get someone who knows what they are talking about....
 
#55
150-153 Let me boast of what I have done. The fame of my power is spread far and wide. My wisdom is full of subtlety. Do not my achievements surpass all qualifications?

154-174 I, Culgi, king of Urim, have also devoted myself to the art of music. Nothing is too complicated for me; I know the full extent of the tigi and the adab, the perfection of the art of music. When I fix the frets on the lute, which enraptures my heart, I never damage its neck; I have devised rules for raising and lowering its intervals.

On the gu-uclyre I know the melodious tuning.

I am familiar with the sa-ec and with drumming on its musical soundbox.

I can take in my hands the miritum, which ....... I know the finger technique of the aljar and sabitum, royal creations.

In the same way I can produce sounds from the urzababitum, the harhar, the zanaru, the ur-gula and the dim-lu-magura.

Even if they bring to me, as one might to a skilled musician, a musical instrument that I have not played previously, when I strike it up I make its true sound known;

I am able to handle it just like something that has been in my hands before. Tuning, stringing, unstringing and fastening are not beyond my skills.

I do not make the reed pipe sound like a rustic pipe, and on my own initiative I can wail a sumunca or make a lament as well as anyone who does it regularly.
 

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