To the fretless community...

Rock? Jazz? Other?

 

Anything. A fretless bass guitar is only as appropriate or inappropraite as you make it.

Just keep in mind that no matter what you learn and work on, PLAY IN TUNE.

 

You want to become "one" with your fretless?

The best advice I can give is.....

...use your fretless exclusively, for everything. Don't touch your fretted bass for a few months.

 

I reccommend playing anything with slides, and or sustained notes. The "smoothie" is excellent for expression in those spots.

 

Agreed! I play my fretless more than my fretted ones and that' s how I got better. I don' t even like playing my fretted basses as much as I used to anymore.

Fred

 

Paul Simon's "Diamonds on the soles of her shoes"

Found this on youtube:

 

Although a lot of the guys on here use roundwounds, halfwounds, and tapewounds (and there's nothing wrong with that; they all make different, unique sounds with their own pros and cons) I prefer to use flatwounds. They give me that nice "muaaaaaaah" that I look for.

Either way, make sure you have some good strings on there, or your tone will suffer (in my experience) more dramatically than with a fretted instrument.

 

I have flats on my fretless too!

 

Disagree. Use every bass, even if you want to get better playing fretless. What I do advice is use your fretless as much as possible. When I bought a fretless I used it a lot, although some stuff just needs frets.

And, if you want to play in tune quickly: play some slow stuff (like Weather Report's Speechless or Jaco's Continuum), but without the characteristic fretless vibrato. Vibrato is an easy way to play out of tune and still let nobody hear it.

 

i played fretless exclusively for over 10 years ( the only bass i had was fretless ) and what i found helped was, if you wanna play a fretless and not just fretted bass on a fretless is to learn all your scales and arpeggios on one string, then 2 strings then learn to move between the intervals by varying your approach like 1 to 2 fret, 2 to 3 slide, 3 to 4 fret etc, and mix them up. it is a good approach this way as it teaches you large shifts and forces you to look at the fingerboard differently and to pay attention to your fingering as when you slide if you want to fret on either side of the target note for your slide, you'll have to have a finger available. for example, if you slide on the e string from f to a and then want to fret the g that is between then you would want to slide with your middle or ring finger leaving the index finger to fret after the slide ( this is just an example, i hope it makes sense ).

and as bimplizkit says, play your fretless all the time, it is a different animal, not just a defretted fretted bass, they have a character all their own.

 

First, don't be afraid to try any song on fretless. My favorite fretless player of all time is Bonnie Raitt's long-time original bassist, Freebo. In a lot of that stuff you can't tell he's playing fretless until HE lets you know on purpose.

I really like Jack Bruce lines on fretless. "Badge" and "White Room" especially sound great. Cop double bass parts too- We used to do Peggy Lee's "Fever", just fretless bass, drums and finger-pops. Try some Jamerson on fretless too.

jte

 

Pino Palladino on Paul Young's "Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)" is great. Try some Stevie Wonder as well.

 

"Broken Hearts" by Living Colour and "Radioactive" by The Firm. There's a couple to start with.

 

One of the greatest backhanded compliments I ever recieved was when a guitar player turned around halfway thru a motown/r&b gig and said "Oh, you're playing a fretless."

 

How about some Blue Murder?

...yeah, I'm a Tony Franklin fan...