You happen to have a newsletter I can subscribe to? 
I remember watching a Victor Wooten video where he was saying that. That said, I don’t think that’s peculiar to the bass. Any instrument you’re only a half-step away from an in-scale note (assuming you are playing your usual usual Western heptatonic scales.)
Not a musician at all here. Why do some bass players choose a fretless bass? I assume that its harder to play but maybe not. Is it because they leaned on a double bass and find it easier to just keep on doing what they already know?
I have two of them and I love them. The feel is perfect. But…I have to admit that I don’t play them like real fretless bass players do. That is, I don’t take advantage of their special tone.
There is a specific sound they make that is similar to an upright as the strings rattle against the fingerboard (some refer to it as “mwah”), but whenever I try that kind of thing I get side-eye from my wife. Fretted instruments don’t make that noise because the frets keep the strings away from the fingerboard.
Also, you can do nice vibrato and slides that a fretted instrument cannot do nearly as nicely.
I suspect there are many other reasons to play them. For me it’s feel. And the ability to inflict my terrible intonation on the masses!
Fretless bass playing sounds completely different from fretted bass playing, that is why. One can usually instantly tell a song uses a fretless, and it changes the feel of the song pretty profoundly.
I don’t know any bass player that only used a fretless, though (not saying they don’t exist). Fretless basses have too much of a flavor for many songs / types of music.
FWIW, I would never describe fretless bass action as “strings rattling against the fretboard”. It’s the fretted bass that has the strings rattling against the frets. “Mwah” is more like strings almost imperceptly vibrating against the fretboard, creating the fretless sound.
Here’s a fretless cover of “Graceland” by Paul Simon. You can hear some of the characteristic sounds/timbre of the instrument, especially around a minute when the refrain kicks in. The one comes across as kind of “rubberbandy” to me, if that makes any sense. I think it’s a really cool sound.
Of course, “Graceland” the album was originally also recorded with a fretless bass, played by Bakithi Kumalo. All in all, fretless bass was really popular in the '80’s, from Kate Bush to Paul Young, with it turning almost a little old-fashioned sounding in the following decades. But there’s always a place for it, here and there
Can you point me at (as in, link) some good examples of fretted vs fretless that showcase the difference? Maybe some solos of each? BTW, one my favorite bass lines is Jack Bruce on Zappa’s Apostrophe. Is that fretless?
Dang! That guy can play! Throwing in harmonics, finger picking like on an acoustic guitar at parts, and so clean through it all.
The only general exceptions to this I can think of are Jaco and David J. Jaco turned the fretless into a style, and David J seems to be an expert at showing it’s a fretless when he wants to, and hiding it whenever he doesn’t. Some days I’m not sure who I’m more impressed by.
Of course, I haven’t played a fretless in years myself. When I was a kid I filed the frets off my lawsuit era Jazz bass. But I’m not Jaco or David J, and I eventually tired of it and the roundwounds eating through the finish, so I bought a replacement neck and went on with life. I still think about getting another fretless, but I’d need a lined one.
Your choice of words does describe it better! It’s a sound I like, but it doesn’t get much airplay in my house unfortunately.
To prove how non-fretless of a fretless player I am, I have flatwounds on mine–that’s all I use on any bass. Flatwounds go against the total essence of what it means to play fretless bass, but that’s how I do it.
Whilst trying to educate myself a bit I came across this.
I don’t know about old fashion but I like the sound. Seems “smoother” or something. I remember my guitar playing friends making a big deal of of fretless players that we’d see at concerts. This was mid-late 70s.
I saw Stanley Clark back then with Chick Corea and Jean-Luc Ponte and again, maybe, 15 years ago (with Al Dimeola and Ponte) when he was playing a double bass. It got me wondering if he played fretless and the answer is “no”. What he did/does(?) play, an Alembic short scale (whatever that means) are selling for $10-15,000. Holy crap!
Speaking of the '80s, I like Pino Pallodino’s fretless on “Every Time You Go Away”
Can’t find a dedicated bass guitar thread, so i’ll post this here !
It’s a bass guitar with a rotating neck ! Crazy …
Both simultaneously ! …
Hehehe, I am subscribed to Matthias’ channel from when he was re-stringing pianos with cooked spaghetti (only half joking). When he came up with this idea, my first thought was “That will never work!”
It is nice to be proven wrong, because if you’re really good it can work. 