Lately, it seems like I’m becoming the patron saint for lost causes. Case in point: the fretless bass. In my real line of work I see the writing on the wall. In the real music instrument market, bass guitars make up around 20 to 15 percent of all “electric” guitar sales. Of those bass guitars sales, around 3 to 1 percent are attributed to fretless models. Do the math and it seems like what I’m looking at today is an instrument going the way of the dodo. This latest mix is a loving, perhaps nostalgic look, at what it stood for, before its gone. Focusing on solo works, those tied more contemplative themes, here’s me hoping we can find something to love again about this frequently neglected instrument.
Allow me to geek out a little bit for my latest Digging Deep mix for LYL Radio: It didn’t have to be that way. In the ‘70s, Jaco Pastorius, chuck off the frets from his Fender bass, filled in his fretboard, played on some iconic Joni Mitchell albums and introduced to the wider world to what various jazz cats had been raving about somewhat quietly. There’s just something gorgeous and mercurial about a fretless bass tone.
On the electric bass side, we get to hear a distillation of the groundbreaking ideas pioneered by musicians like Eberhard Weber and Danny Thompson who plugged in their (sometimes heavily modified) upright acoustic basses and brought what was just once thought of as a “concert” instrument into the realm of modern music. Once musician’s like Bill Wyman and Rand Forbes, to name a few, caught on to how different their basses sounded without frets (to harken back to it’s “classical” routes) they realized the potential in such change.
Now you could now impart certain harmonics and overtones lost through fretted instruments. Gliding up and down the fretboard, the guitar’s tone sounded far more silky and “natural” than a standard fretted version. There’s an argument behind this: but fretless basses sound noticeably warmer and deeper. Once they get/got into the hands of skilled players, those unafraid to work with things like vibrato, bends, and to clean up their technique a bit more, these fretless basses went beyond the jazz realm and went into the fields of prog, rock, new age, and electro-pop.
In its heyday, what they brought to a recording session was enticing — they rarely needed any extra effects as they had a rich sound that worked perfectly nearly anything. They could actually function as lead instruments, not simply be there to keep time with a rhythm section. Going “fretless” meant something then.
This womb-like tone. Melodic yet profound, once heard, is immediately recognizable. However, as tastes change, so do things come to get neglected. From the ‘90s onward it, seemingly, dropped off the musical map. One wonders why. This is my attempt to remind others of that wonderful instrument that is sorely in need of revival with our current generation.
Fret Less
- T. On a White Horse: Eberhard Weber
- Biały Garbus: Krzysztof Ścierańsk
- Loving Lash: Isao Suzuki (鈴木勲)
- Portrait of Tracy: Jaco Pastorius
- A Walk in the Country: Mo Foster
- Mosaic: Mark Egan
- Lost Affections In A Room: Mick Karn
- Comunicazioni Interne: Francesco Messina
- Plateau: Motohiko Hamase (濱瀬元彦)
- My Toby/My Friend: David Friesen
- Watson & Crick: Michael Manring
- A Child Is Born: Alain Caron & Michel Donato
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