A fretless guitar is a
guitar
The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...
with a
fingerboard
The fingerboard (also known as a fretboard on fretted instruments) is an important component of most stringed instruments. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the front of the neck of an instrument. The stri ...
without
fret
A fret is any of the thin strips of material, usually metal wire, inserted laterally at specific positions along the neck or fretboard of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the full width of the neck. On some historical inst ...
s, typically a standard instrument that has had the frets removed, though some custom-built and commercial fretless guitars are occasionally made.
The classic fretless guitar was first pioneered in 1976 by Turkish musician
Erkan Oğur. Fretless bass guitars are readily available, with most major guitar manufacturers producing fretless models.
On the fretless guitar, the performer's fingers press the string directly against the fingerboard, as with a
violin
The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...
, resulting in a vibrating string that extends from the
bridge
A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...
(where the strings are attached) to the fingertip instead of to a fret.
Technique
Musicians employ a standard harmony and the
twelve-tone technique
The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition. The technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale ...
as a base for exploring tones, using a fretless guitar. Fretless guitars offer musicians an ability to use
just intonation
In music, just intonation or pure intonation is a musical tuning, tuning system in which the space between notes' frequency, frequencies (called interval (music), intervals) is a natural number, whole number ratio, ratio. Intervals spaced in thi ...
in any key and mode and explore new sounds through using
microtonal
Microtonality is the use in music of microtones — intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". It may also be extended to include any music using intervals not found in the customary Western tuning of twelve equal interv ...
harmonies and folk melodies in a jazz-groove context.
A detailed article on extended techniques for fretless electric guitar - written by British guitarist Rich Perks - was published by ''Music and Practice'' journal in 2019.
Musicianship with fretless guitars differ from fretted guitars:
* They require greater finger position precision, because the position of the node of the string is continuously variable (being established by the position of the finger) rather than fixed (established by the position of a fret). As a consequence of this, chordal playing in particular is more difficult to achieve accurately.
* The string resonance is reduced, requiring more forceful plucking or modified
amplification (
pickups) to achieve desired volume.
* The smooth surface of the fingerboard allows
legato
In music performance and notation, legato (; Italian for "tied together"; French ''lié''; German ''gebunden'') indicates that musical notes are played or sung smoothly, such that the transition from note to note is made with no intervening si ...
playing, with smooth transitional
slurs between notes
Fretless guitars are uncommon in most forms of western music and generally limited to the electrified instruments, due to their decreased acoustic volume and sustain.
The fretless bass guitar has found popularity in many forms of western music, from pop to jazz. The first use of fretless bass guitars dates back to
Bill Wyman
William George Wyman ( né Perks; born 24 October 1936) is an English musician who was the bass guitarist with the rock band the Rolling Stones from 1962 to 1993. Wyman was part of the band's first stable lineup and performed on their first 19 ...
in the early 1960s.
Festivals featuring live fretless guitar music have been held for several years both in the US and in Europe. In New York, the first NYC Fretless Guitar Festival was held in 2005. In the Netherlands, the Dutch Fretless Guitar Festival has taken place since 2006.
See also
*
Fretless bass
A fretless bass is an electric bass guitar whose neck lacks frets and thus is smooth like traditional string instruments, and like the neck of an acoustic double bass. While the fretless bass is played in all styles of music, it is most common in ...
References
External links
Unfretted.com - fretless guitar resource: history, news, reviews, tips, FAQs, MP3s, lists, dictionary, etc.
NYC Fretless Guitar Festival- The New York Fretless Guitar Festival features the best fretless players from around the world.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fretless Guitar
Guitars
Continuous pitch instruments