Fretless Bass

(copied from my ad-infested blog on April 2, 2023…)

I started learning to play bass guitar a few months after retirement. After a couple of years or so of doing that with a four string fretted bass (G&L L-2000) I got it into my head that I wanted to get a fretless bass. Besides really liking the sound of the instrument (which started a long time ago when I saw Pat Metheny on his Watercolors tour back in the 1970’s. His bass player on that tour was Eberhard Weber, whose sound I fell in love with), I figured it would be harder musically and in particular would force me to develop my ear. That was one of the things I was after in my musical journey.

At first my teacher discouraged me but I persisted. I bought an Ibanez SRF700 fretless bass. My teacher express skepticism, especially since it had an unlined fretboard. So far I’ve been doing pretty well in the fretless world. My main instrument is still a fretted bass but every week I spend some time on the fretless. Well, most weeks anyway.

The main thing I’m working on now is 4-part Bach chorales. I play and record four tracks in my DAW (initially GarageBand and now Logic Pro). I am working through the Reimenschneider book. Some months ago I also acquired a 5-string fretless so I use that in addition to my Ibanez on these pieces. I’ll have more to say about my 5-string journey in a future post.

I have collected my top ten recordings of these chorales to date in a playlist on SoundCloud.