Embedded, Unraised Frets

[poor_nigel]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4713&item=3746318293&rd=1  
 
The seller of this Tobias claims this bass has fretless sound with fretted tonal accuracy.  Hey Fretless members, what say you all on this?  I have never heard of this.  I have always wanted a fretless, but I figured I would just sound awful, since I slid alot and would be too sloppy to stop at exactly the right places to stay 'in key.'  Perhaps it is just a compromise between fretted and fretless sound, and possibly worse accuracy in the end.  Educate me, please . . .
 
Forgot to bring up a point - A point of confusion arises in me from fretless members always talking about using a fretboard free of inlays, as it changes the tone when you go 'over' them.  This seems along the same lines, but even more so.  Plus, since they are 'unraised frets,' I do not see how this imporves accuracy.
 
(Message edited by poor_nigel on September 07, 2004)

[poor_nigel]

I think I get it.  They are just fret markers, so they improve tonal accuracy by seeing if your fingers are placed at the right spot.  Silly me.  OK, delete this thread before others see how little sleep I got last night.  Still, the way it was worded . . . .

[bassman10096]

I have a fretless that is unlined (has a full complement of unraised frets).  I can state with full confidence that the lines don't keep my fingers where they should be - they just provide a visual aid to explain why I sound SOOO bad!
 
Nonetheless, as I will soon break down and sell my fretless (in hopes of investing in something that makes me sound better), I'll be sorely tempted to use this brilliant advertising ploy!  
 
Hmmm...unraised frets?  What a GREAT feature!  Even better than lined fretless, huh?  Foolproof?  Even I can play it!  Now, where's that Buy-it-Now button?
 
Bill (wanna buy a used bass?)

[David Houck]

Now there's an idea.  When playing fretless style, the frets are unraised.  But if you want to switch to fretted style, there's a button you can push that automatically raises the frets to the correct height.

[dnburgess]

How about a detachable fingerboard that is fretted on one side and fretless on the other?

[bigredbass]

I think the preference for lined or unlined fretless fingerboards goes down to one's DNA, almost.
 
One of my hometown heroes was a FABULOUS fretless player, could quote Jaco lines all day long.  Played a lined Spector, said he wasn't smart enough (!?!?) to play a 'blank' fingerboard.  
 
I find other people, particularly upright or violin players, who think the lines are a useless crutch.  So I s'pose it has a lot to do with your previous experience and training.
 
I'd love to play fretless one day, but never having played viol, I'm REAL sure I'm not smart enough either!
 
Bob, whaddya think?
 
J o e y

[bob]

Joey,
 
It's not about being smart enough, just a matter of listening and feeling.
 
Yeah, it takes a while - quite a few years for me, having come from a guitar background - and about all I'll say about my current ability is that a very small number of people have heard me play and don't get too irritated by it :-)
 
As to the lines, I commented a while ago (some oher thread, but it could be found...) that I personally find lines to be distracting. I think that to play fretless well (or upright, whatever), you have to position your fingers by ear, rather than sight.
 
I don't mean that to sound snobbish, and I do sometimes look at my side dots, and if I usually played fretted then I might really appreciate the lines. But I also just love the look of a 'blank' fingerboard, and wouldn't have it any other way.
 
Maybe you're right about the DNA... I have a really hard time playing a fretted instrument these days, and a big part of that is just visual, seeing all these pieces of metal where I think my fingers should be.
 
It's a personal choice, and that's just mine.
 
I think you should go for it, Joey - find a used one, don't spend a ton of money, don't judge yourself, and just have some fun for a while. (Maybe that's not exactly what you were asking, but it's a good answer.)
-Bob

[bigredbass]

Bob:
 
You might answer something I've wondered about:
 
Although I'm a fanatic about tuning/in tune, I've often thought that for most music, I could be 'off' pitch a little, and no one would be the wiser.  Wouldn't this apply to fretless?  I've often wondered if that slight off-pitch would almost introduce that 12-string effect in a way, you know, that slight off-pitch that thickens things?
 
J o e y

[811952]

Joey,
Give Band on the Run a listen.  You could be *off* by nearly a quarter-tone and still have a hit record!  Seriously, if you've got a decent vibrato going on a fretless you *are* slightly off-pitch and yes, it thickens things nicely.  It's static off-pitch that makes me wince..
John

[David Houck]

I'm guessing it's different for each person.  I don't have perfect pitch, but I've heard that people with perfect pitch can quite readily tell when someone's out of tune.  I am able to tell quite often though.  There is a promo on the local PBS station where the background music is some very nice accoustic finger picking.  Every time that promo comes on I'm thinking the open A string is a bit flat.

[adriaan]

At the risk of sounding pedantic, I can't imagine someone having had a healthy exposure to tonal music NOT being able to tell that someone's out of tune. Any decent pair of ears will do: having PP myself, I know my wife (non-PP, untrained) cringes as soon as I do when it happens.
 
Perfect pitch is not any better than 'musical pitch' - not in any way. It is no more than the ability to know which note is played, without need for a reference pitch.
 
Funny thing, PP: my fingers get lost on a keyboard that is too far off standard pitch. There is a range of tolerance, and also a point where the pitch is definitely off. However, on guitar or bass, I have no problem with detuning strings.

[son_of_magni]

It's importent to realise, that with an even tempered instrument (ie. fretted or piano for instance) you cannot play exactly in tune.  The first keyboard instruments were tuned to play only in certain keys.  This natural tempered tuning sounds much more pleasing but is very restrictive for a keyboard.  Fretless instruments like the violin family can make the proper distinction between an F# and a Gb and do it without being restricted to playing in only a few keys.  
 
Regarding vibrato and being in tune, I was taught (correctly) that when playing exercises you never use vibrato.  You need to learn to play in tune first, and use vibrato as an enhancement, not a crutch to cover up for poor intonation.  
 
SoM (the snob one)
 
(Message edited by son_of_magni on September 09, 2004)

[David Houck]

Unless the point of the particular exercise is to improve your vibrato technique .

[bob]

Thanks, snobby SoM, I was 'tempted' to get into the temperment stuff, but couldn't face writing about it. Fact is, with frets you reallly can't play in tune - but the converse is not a given... and vibrato is not the answer.
 
Adriaan, I can't help feeling that you're downplaying the curse of PP (which I do not have). It seems to me that your wife could listen to someone playing a bass/guitar/violin that was perfectly tuned to an incorrect reference, and while she would not wince if it was played well, you couldn't listen to it at all.
 
So as long as we're expanding the discussion, what thoughts do you guys have on setting intonation on a fretless? I find that I'm even more obsessive about it than I used to be on fretted (guitar). It's harder, takes more time and patience, but it seems that when you finally get it right, the thing just sings.
 
I feel like some of it has to do with sympathetic vibrations across strings, and it certainly makes it easier to play chords or doublestops, but also think it may matter that you're playing a note on some particlar string at the right point on that string (hard to explain). Somehow or other, the harmonics just work out better, and this seems to help your ear determine pitch more accurately, and so forth.
 
Any thoughts?

[adriaan]

Bob,
 
Luckily PP does not mean that I can't listen to anything tuned to a reference pitch other than A=440 Hz. I have a range of tolerance where I can say: this is still an A, and going down there is a point where I perceive A flat, etc. And that's still okay: people can tune up/down to any reference pitch, and I can listen to that without cringing, as long as they play in tune with themselves. Hey, I can even play along on fretless! But if I'm playing from a score, and I'm tuned one step down, I do have to transpose mentally - so you see how it can get annoying. (Ah, choir practice! The horror! - Think sliding scales ...)
 
I've played a good number of pianos at theatres and impromptu stages in my time. Maybe twice the piano was at the absolute lowest extreme of what I can handle. Just once there was a piano that was tuned to A flat, and my fingers just could not hit the right keys. No use depending on motoric memory: on keyboards, my fingers seem to respond to reflexes from my hearing and vice versa, so if my ears hear a different pitch to what they expect from what keys were struck, then there's a reflex going out to the fingers to strike other keys - and I get utterly lost.
 
Then the fretted/tempered discussion. Tempered is when you have separate (sets of) strings to produce the discreet steps in the tonal range of the instrument. Piano tuners do a mix-and-match in selecting pitches that allow the player to use as many tonalities without getting too far off-pitch in any of those tonalities.
 
On a fretted instrument the placement of the frets provides the dicreet steps in the tonal range of each string. The placement follows the rules that old Pythagoras found (halve the length and you double the pitch). Now if you would tune a piano that way then you'd be stuck in C major without incidentals, or people would get annoyed. Somehow people do accept the dirty tuning on fretted instruments, and also the impure tuning on tempered instruments.
 
And then there is the Buzz Feiten system, which is kind of a tempered approach to get the lowest three frets more in tune with the rest. Not forgetting the crinkly fret that (I think) Yamaha developed for the lower frets.
 
If you play a fretted instrument in a band along with unfretted string instruments, woodwind or brass - or tempered instruments for that matter - you will be slightly off key most of the time. It is noticeable mostly on the lower frets, hence the Feiten system. I do find that I can compensate fairly naturally on fretless. And then you have the trombone, which poses similar challenges to players. In jazz you do get to hit a lot of the same notes at the same time on bass and trombone, and it gets real tricky when the score has unisono chromatic progressions to thicken things up.