plunker
Well-known member
Just wondering. In the early 70s a bassist Jaco Pastorius inroduced a fretless bass. Any thoughts on a fretless uke. ( I had an oppotunity to play with Jaco once)
Just wondering. In the early 70s a bassist Jaco Pastorius inroduced a fretless bass. Any thoughts on a fretless uke. ( I had an oppotunity to play with Jaco once)
Liam Kirby of Wunderkammer instruments once did a 5 string fretless soprano
Netlfix has a good documentary about Jacko.
Forgive my ignorance, but what is the benefit of a fretless instrument other than making it more interesting/challenging to play?
Forgive my ignorance, but what is the benefit of a fretless instrument other than making it more interesting/challenging to play?
Haven’t given a lot of thought to this, since I can barely play the instrument with frets. That said, if you didn’t have frets, you’d be able to pull off some neat tricks like true glissandos. You could play semi- and quarter tones (for jazz or non-Western music). You’d have a true ability to play a blue note -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_note).
You’d also have better control over your tunings. So if someone else in the band was off just a smidge, all you’d need to do is slide up or down a smidge, rather than fuss with tuners. Seems trivial, but it could be really important mid-song.
While we are at it, I suppose you could train yourself to from chords in different tuning methods. But that’s just crazy talk and I can’t imagine who would take the time to learn how to do that.