Fretless start

[Ghed]

Hi bass freak!
I have an important question .. I started to play bass 7 years ago and now I decided to try to play a fretless..
.. I am really afraid .. any suggestions?
And you, Steve?
Thank you
Flavio - Italia

 

[Coypu]

This is from www.garywillis.com

Hey Willis,
I've been playing bass since I was 14 (25 now), but stopped playing 3 years ago 'cause of complications of college and work. Anyway I'm ready to pick up my strings again, and wanna go on to fretless (exclusively) but I AM a little nervous about intonation, as I played fretted exclusively before and the one time I tried a fretless bass I really SUCKED. Any thoughts on jumping on the fretless bandwagon?

Great to hear you're thinking about a comeback. I'm still a little nervous about intonation myself. Maybe you've heard this before but some good advice I heard once was that to be good at something you have to be willing to be bad at it for a while. It's one thing to be bad on a fretted but as you know, to be bad on a fretless....well, let's say it's not for the faint of heart. There's no such thing as a schedule or a time in your life when you should already have this together or that. Here's what I found out not long after taking up fretless. If you do all your practicing on a fretless, a fretted is pretty damn easy....Maybe practice fretless in private, play fretted in public and make the switch whenever you feel you're ready.

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hope it helps.

 

[MonkeyBabu]

I've played a fretless only once in my life, jsut picked it up at a used music store to give it a shot for fun, and quite frankly i loved it.

I didn't (seem to me at least) to have any problems adjusting... it only got complicated towards the higher frets :s. But I would totally not be afraid to make the switch even if it does mean alot of extra work for a little while, its so damn cool!

Best of luck to yaz tho, but no one should be intimidated by it until they've tried it.

 

[HippieOfDoom]

Nah, c'mon. It's not like you're switching from the kazoo to the bassoon. You just have to be better at finding the right notes and not relying on a fret. Yeah, you need to think alittle differently with the intonation and all...but it's still an a electric bass. Play's pretty much the same. More slides, less chords; limited tapping but less dead spots. At least you don't have to learn a bow technique along with fingering position like I did when I was a kid.

 

[Ghed]

Ok. I decided to buy a fretless bass.
.. ehehehe .. I understood the lesson! Why don't try?
I would thank all who have involved in this thread.

Flavio

 

[Higon]

Bah, no reason to fear the Fretless... It´s just another bass, but without frets (Oh! How Brilliant I Am!)

It´s just like ridding a car without a steering whell. At the first time, you don´t know where the F*** you should start, but after some time it´s just fun.

(I´m not that good at comparison)

 

[capeda]

I think I'm gonna pull a Jaco and pry the frets outta my p-bass...

 

[thefountainhead]

Hard to go fretless, I found some goon explcations for fretless guitar beginners on some guy from Germany Tom Geldschläger, his explications were very helpfull