I remember reading a quote from a legendary guitarist (can’t remember which) who said that the trick to playing is to just “follow the dots”.
All four of my husband’s guitars have some sort of fret marking. Two are professional grade acoustic. One of those is handmade by an independent artist. The other is a finger picking style, because that’s what he plays, and still has the markings.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a guitar that didn’t have them and I have seen a lot. Not as many as I used to when I let my husband drag me around to music stores, but still quite a few these days.
A similar thing happenned to my. A guitarrist friend ask me to play bass for him on a couple of songs. If the chord was on the 8th or 9th fret I just couldn’t “read” as quick as I wanted.
Fuck all un-dotted guitars.
FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH
Banjos have dots and inlays, too. But the banjo has dots and inlay on the 10th fret, rather than the 9th fret of a guitar.
David
I never noticed the dots before. How many frets are usually on a guitar? I understand that they’re spaced 1/2 step apart. Is it hard to tell where you’re playing because of how you hold the instrument? I’ve never tried playing a guitar (just violin and piano) so I’m not really sure how this works.
Electric guitars typically have 21 frets; some have 24. Acoustics usually have 20, but only about 15 are usable w/o a cutaway unless you have huge hands/long fingers.
It’s possible to play across different positions without looking, but it sure helps to be able to look down every now and then, especially if you’re moving up more than a few whole steps at once.
Dotless fingerboards can be preferable if you use a capo a lot, because the dots are in the wrong place then.
As others have noted, nicer classical guitars do not have the dots. If you go into that climate-controlled back room of Guitar Center and pick up a $3000 classical guitar, it will not have any markings.
I have one of each, a student-model Yamaha classical with the dots and a somewhat nicer classical without anything at all.
I would go crazy if my electric guitars didn’t have any dots, because the exposed scale is so much longer (22 frets) and each guitar has a different shape.
With classical guitars, on the other hand, the shape is very standard, and the 12th fret (the octave, and midpoint of the string) is always lined up right over the edge of the body. That provides a dead-easy visual and tactile way to find the 12th fret and others around it.
See how this $2500 Ramirez looks identical to this $200 Yamaha.
After a short while with the instrument, you get used to mentally spotting the 5th fret. The rest (6-11) all start to fall in after a while.
My electric guitar (a Les Paul) has dots on the side and bar markers on the fretboard, but when playing I only ever look at the dots on the side. Personally, I’ll use the dots to figure out where to start playing, but (unless I’m learning a new song) then once I’m going I don’t need to look down much at all because I know the relative fingering from that start point.
FWIW, My classical acoustic doesn’t have dots on the fretboard, but it does on the side of the neck, although those start at the 5th fret (most guitars have a dot on the third fret).
Think of it this way: a decent typist could probably type relatively error-free on a blank keyboard, but it’s a whole lot easier with the letters printed on them.
Steve Cropper - "Just follow the dots and you can’t get into trouble. "
The longer scale length of a bass makes the accuracy of fingering a note on a fretless bass more fussy. Think about it, the more real estate on the neck gives you more of an opportunity for intonation issues. A guitar’s scale is usually 24 3/4ish" (Les Paul) or 25 1/2ish" (Strat), but an electric bass has a scale of somewhere in the 34-36" ballpark.
Most of my basses have dots on the fingerboard and on the side of the neck centered between the frets at the usual positions. My two unlined fretless bass, however, have no dots on the fingerboard and dots on the side of the neck where a fret would be if it was fretted (except for the double dot at the octave).
My upright bass has a string length of about 41 1/2" inches and has no markings whatsoever. It’s all muscle memory and ears. There is a lot more potential for intonation errors with this instrument. Usually “rolling” your fingers can correct sour notes, but sometimes a little shift is necessary. And there’s always vibrato…
One school of thought regarding choosing strings for a fretless bass is use the strings that give you the sound you’re after, regardless of the damage it will do to your fingerboard. As it has been said before, it’s your tool to create. If you like the bright sound of roundwounds (ala Jaco), use them and get your fingerboard dressed when the grooves caused by the strings affect your tone. You can always coat your fingerboard with epoxy if you really want to protect it, or use a fingerboard made of ebony or phenolic.
If you like the sound (and feel, at least in my case) of flats, use 'em. I’ve got Thomastik flats on my 1969 fretless P and Thomastik bronze acousticores (roundwound) on my Carvin acoustic/electric fretless. Two very different sounding axes.
And there’s nothing wrong with flatwound guitar strings, just a different tone. I’ve got some on a Danelectro reissue…gives it a more jazzy vibe.
Ha, got it! (I’m replying w/o having to look at the keyboard even when placing my hands on it, so I guess I must be an ace typist, woo-hoo!)
It’s a fair hijack of this thread, but it’s my own thread, so I’m exercising my droit du seigneur, more-or-less: to those of you who have played guitar and any other musical instrument, which was harder to learn… and once learned, to play?
Just to reiterate what my multi-chorded cousin said above, flatwounds have their place.
I have a Howard Roberts Fusion Gibson that I keep with flatwounds for that fat jazzy sound. The other day I went to the store looking for flatwound 12s and they gave me “flat top” strings instead of flatwounds (they didn’t have flatwounds in 12), and I’m not very happy with the tone of the pseudo flat strings (they are round-wound strings that are ground down).