I found myself back at Unfretted, the site for fretless guitar players. I haven’t yet taken the plunge by ripping the frets out of my violin-shaped Trump El Cheapo (I can’t bear to – it’s such a great guitar), but I’ve come close. Anyway, for the day I do, Unfretted is the place.
For one thing, it has a helpful series of lessons by Tim Donahue. Apparently there’s more to this than “remove frets and play.” Intonation (playing in tune) is something you can’t take for granted – like a fiddle player, you have to do it yourself. Vibrato is done differently; bends are replaced by slides; chords are a lot more complicated if you want them to sound in tune, and in fact fretless players seem to play fewer of them. Donahue gets into all of this and offers a few exercises.
Set up is different, too. No frets, of course. The fingerboard has to be planed absolutely smoothly, or you’ll hear little bumps where you expect to hear slides. Action is extremely low – so low, in fact, that there’s a little buzz, which for some reason is desirable. Also: a fretted guitar’s saddle(s) is/are usually compensated to allow for the effect of pressing each string down to the fretboard in order to change pitch. On a fretless guitar, the low action means that this compensation is not necessary. It’s where you place your fingers that determines intonation, so saddle adjustment is done completely differently; it needs to reflect the geometry/mechanics of the individual player’s hand. Donahue recommends that you learn to do this yourself, rather than relying on a luthier.
Not sure you want to dive in? There are sound clips of fretless players so you can sample the whole vibe. (None of these guys are playing “Freight Train” or anything like it, by the way. You have to have a little yen for weirdness.)
Like I said, I’m not quite there yet…
[TJH]
“There were a lot more gigs when I was coming up. The studio gigs have dried out to a large degree because everyone's a studio whiz now. Everybody knows how to use Pro Tools.
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