Unlined Drills

[Green Knight]

Hi, I'm trading for an unlined fretless. I learned on a lined fretless but always looked at the neck to position my hands before flying. The transition will not be easy. Anyone know any good drills? A friend suggested putting a tuner on the headstock and trying to hit particular notes or play scales without clams. Anything more organic?

 

[lz4005]

Don't use a tuner. You need to move away from using your eyes to determine pitch and use your ears.

You'll have side dots. Those are enough visual reference for position jumps, etc.

The way to practice is to just play along with any source of audio until you can do it in tune. You could record yourself playing scales on fretted, or on guitar, or on keys, and match that. Or use a song you like. It doesn't matter.

 

[MonetBass]

On my unlined, I still look at the side dots sometimes to get my bearings when playing higher on the neck, but definitely work on using your ears more to play on pitch.

 

[RyanOh]

Hi, I'm trading for an unlined fretless. I learned on a lined fretless but always looked at the neck to position my hands before flying. The transition will not be easy. Anyone know any good drills? A friend suggested putting a tuner on the headstock and trying to hit particular notes or play scales without clams. Anything more organic?

I check my unlined fretless intonation with a pedal tuner, they track much faster and more accurately than a headstock tuner.

I happen to use the tuner in my Zoom B3n but I think most pedal tuners will work. I find I need to work on upper register most, above the 12th fret gets tight and I tend go sharp.

 

[Green Knight]

Thanks everybody! Upper register seems to be a recurring theme in these discussions. I think I'll start with playing modes up and down the scale and see how bad I mess that up.

 

[Nashrakh]

You might want to check out drones. Wind players use them a lot when training intonation (double bassists too but I'm not sure) - basically, you have a reference tone and you intonate to that. Start with matching pitches by ear, then try playing scales or chords over it. You'll soon learn to identify whether you're sharp or flat and how to correct that on the fly. Makes for some great ear training too as you'll get the sound of different intervals over a fix point in your fingers.

Emphasis on 'by ear', btw. That's the whole idea.

 

[Green Knight]

You might want to check out drones. Wind players use them a lot when training intonation (double bassists too but I'm not sure) - basically, you have a reference tone and you intonate to that. Start with matching pitches by ear, then try playing scales or chords over it. You'll soon learn to identify whether you're sharp or flat and how to correct that on the fly. Makes for some great ear training too as you'll get the sound of different intervals over a fix point in your fingers.

Emphasis on 'by ear', btw. That's the whole idea.

I got an EHX Superego I can dust off for precisely that purpose!