Practising fretless with non A440 tracks?

[SteveCS]

I'm sorry but there are so many dumb answers in this thread. Retuning your bass also does things to its intonation. It does things to the timbre. It does things to how it sounds in your ear. If you want to train muscle memory, that's fine. But to so on a well-tuned, intonated bass in A=440. Don't retune your bass, pitch shift the song. You want the intonation of your bass and the response to be the exact same time every time you play it, not depending on the song.

True if we were talking about going down to D G C F or up to F# B E A. But between A=435, A=440 and A=442 those things really don't come in to play. Most people can't even hear ±5 cents and the average fretless player probably can't manage better that ±10 cents - from what I hear most don't even get close to that. The difference between 440Hz and 442Hz is about 8 cents - enough to beat or sound 'sour' but not enough to affect the physical response of an electric bass.

 

[BassAgent]

All true, but that would also mean you wouldn't hear your bass being "out of tune" when playing along to an A=442 track. However, if you play along to Michael Jackson's Beat It for example, that's between E and Eb. And that's exactly not the time when you should be retuning your bass.

 

[SteveCS]

...
but that would also mean you wouldn't hear your bass being "out of tune"
...

(Un)fortunately I am in the small minority that can hear such small discrepancies. Fortunate in that it makes me very sensitive to (and critical of) my own intonation, but unfortunate because it makes me perhaps over-sensitive to (and perhaps over-critical of) others' intonation. Win some; lose some!!

 

[Maxra]

Thanks for all your replies. there seem to be several interesting areas coming up here:

Some folks are of the opinion that playing an A440 tuned fretless against a non A440 track upsets your muscle memory so you don't get a good fix on tuning. That sounds logical, but - others point out that apart from open strings, all tuning on an unfretted stringed instrument is relative to where you are on the fingerboard. Unlike say a piano, the distances get smaller as you go up the board. I'm coming to a 32" scale acoustic fretless bass after having played fiddle, viola, and cello. I haven't tried double bass, but most of those don't have fingerboard dots either. Some here say they don't use open strings much as they don't sound like a fretless, another interesting area. I have online fretless method where the instructor's P style fretless sounds very like a fretted bass when he plays without slides or vibrato, and the open strings fit right in. My acoustic fretless doesn't, so maybe I should learn how to play without open strings (?) If you do learn that and don't look at the dots, does it matter if you're playing against A440 or something slightly away from that? Is that significantly different from say putting your fretted P bass down and picking up a fretted 25" mini bass or an (unfretted of course) double bass? The jury appears to be out.

To do any of this without staring at the fretboard dots or lines, you have to be able to hear your bass and listen to it. Maybe that's why in the 70s so many fretted bassists I saw live in say college bands used a sound that from the floor was all bass rumble and no note (18" speakers and a wooly sounding amp) - maybe they often couldn't hear what they were playing. I suspect quite a lot of them didn't know what they were playing compared to today, but that's another discussion Thanks, Max

 

[SteveCS]

...
but - others point out that apart from open strings, all tuning on an unfretted stringed instrument is relative to where you are on the fingerboard.
...
I'm coming to a 32" scale acoustic fretless bass after having played fiddle, viola, and cello.

Perhaps it is worth considering how your 'cello performance might go if the cello itself is out of tune.

 

[Maxra]

Cello performance might be tricky if the strings are out of tune with each other It's interesting that violin family instruments often have open strings that sound quite different to stopped notes (the violin top string open E often sounds really trebly). Classical players particularly are taught how to play in higher positions without using them, and that depends on how convenient the music is. If you're e.g. playing violin in a key where you don't have any open strings available (ie keys where the notes G D A and E are all sharp or flat), then I think you could quite easily adjust to A being somewhere different than your fiddle's tuned. But of course many of us folk players (particularly) play mostly around the top of the circle of 5ths, C G D A, maybe F or Bb, and related keys, so we do have the opens available.

Playing with Tempered tuning instruments like accordions and keyboards, or natural scale ones like Highland bagpipes, is another kettle of worms, but I suspect a fretless bass is better equipped to handle that than a fretted one - if the player's up to it

 

[SteveCS]

Cello performance might be tricky if the strings are out of tune with each other

For sure! Any time the notes are not where you expect them to be is a PITA. This can be because the instrument is out of tune with others or with itself; it might be badly set up so the relationship changes through different positions or the position of the instrument relative to your body might change, or any og the above. By way of an example ...

My daughter is a classical cellist and (now) double-bassist, currently year 3 of her BMus (Classical Double Bass) at the Royal Academy of Music. I remember when she was 12 or 13 doing a school performance of Gabriel Faure's 'Sicilienne in G Minor' for solo 'cello and piano, from memory. She was centre stage in the spotlight and it started well. But the endpin/spike wasn't fully locked. Gravity took over and 'cello started slipping down the spike. Had it collapsed in one hit she would have stopped, laughed it off and started again. But it was slow and almost imperceptible, at least to begin with. By the end (just under 4 minutes later) the 'cello was about 8" closer to the ground and she had 'chased' it all the way. By the end she was hunched over in the chair and her hand-shape was unrecognisable but she managed to stay just about in tune. She made a very musical performance but it was nothing compared to how she had been practicing at home beforehand. Anything that increases workload will inevitably get in the way - the outcome depends on how we choose to react and the skills we have to deal with the challenge, but we should to everything we can to avoid the problems in the first place. Be in tune; have a good setup; keep your spike tight!!

 

[evanrunyon]

Always remember; Jaco, Edgar, Yo-Yo Ma, Heifetz, etc. all played/play notes out of tune occasionally, but a handful of randos on TB have perfect intonation 100% of the time

 

[SteveCS]

Always remember; Jaco, Edgar, Yo-Yo Ma, Heifetz, etc. all played/play notes out of tune occasionally, but a handful of randos on TB have perfect intonation 100% of the time

No-one is suggesting that, but there are plenty of things that can be done to reduce the chances of missing - most of them boil down to hard work. All of the classical strings methods are predicated to some extent on this objective. Seems a shame that a whole other bunch of randos on TB think that sketchy intonation is acceptable.

 

[evanrunyon]

I was really just poking fun at the idea that +/- a few Hz is going to noticeably impact the performance of even a high-level player, but sure. I think wearing a new pair of shoes or a tight jacket, or having some nasty slapback in the hall impacts my odds of hitting all the notes more, personally.

There’s a great David Walter article where he bemoans a colleague’s laser focus on intonation to the detriment of all else, and just how sad he felt for said colleague since it must mean he could never enjoy Kreisler or Isaac Stern, or his children’s performances. True, classical music has some different values and foci, but I don’t know. Les Claypool’s fretless intonation started off pretty wacky, but I’ve never found that distracting on early Primus records.

 

[BBQisgood]

I was really just poking fun at the idea that +/- a few Hz is going to noticeably impact the performance of even a high-level player, but sure.

Also, for what it’s worth, I almost always tune to 442 in a 440 context. As the adage goes, better to be sharp than out of tune.

Hmmmm.

 

[evanrunyon]

Poking fun at myself, as well. Man, everyone’s so very serious.

 

[sean_on_bass]

I'm new to fretless. If appreciate advice on whether it's good idea to practice by playing along to non A440 tracks. This seems like a bad idea for fretted basses, but on fretless only the open strings will be out of tune, and the fingerboard dots - well...

You really don't need to think about how the track you are playing with is tuned. Just throw on a recording and play along, and use your ear to guide what to do. if your open strings don't sound right, then tune them up or down a tad, or finger those notes on the board. IMO YMMV

The idea of retuning a track is kind of weird and insane to me.

 

[BBQisgood]

You really don't need to think about how the track you are playing with is tuned. Just throw on a recording and play along, and use your ear to guide what to do. if your open strings don't sound right, then tune them up or down a tad, or finger those notes on the board. IMO YMMV

The idea of retuning a track is kind of weird and insane to me.

Careful man. Your well-reasoned, topic-specific, positive, helpful, and well-written reply may get you labeled as a super-serious talkbass rando who cares too much about intonation.

If it happens, don’t worry. At least you’ll be welcome and in good company with the rest of us!!

 

[Jhengsman]

You really don't need to think about how the track you are playing with is tuned. Just throw on a recording and play along, and use your ear to guide what to do. if your open strings don't sound right, then tune them up or down a tad, or finger those notes on the board. IMO YMMV

The idea of retuning a track is kind of weird and insane to me.

I guess that with present technology it is easier to retune a track and save it for later then to retune your instrument for every song you play with to meet the tuning of the released version's recording and playback speed

 

[hieronymous]

I thought of another reason to get good at retuning - what if you want to play along with an old album? A lot of times on stuff from the 70s and earlier, each song was recorded separately, with no guarantee of consistent tuning, even if there was a keyboard instrument present (tapes might have played fast or slow at some point in the whole process, etc.) Or what if you just want to play along with a bunch of stuff and it's not precisely tuned? Maybe a playlist - are you really going to download all those songs? Just retune dammit!