Give me your mind:
Is fretless bass as popular as a fretted one?
What kind of music do you play with (if you do)?
Slap & tap it!
Fretless isn't nearly as popular as fretted. Just look in any guitar shop. Most will have maybe one fretless at any given time. Once in a Guitar Center, I saw two! This occasional fretless will always be a four string, since a fretless five string player is very rare. Of course, I think that a good portion of the serious bassist community owns at least one fretless, but not many people use a fretless as their primary axe. I do, though. I'm not genre-picky.
Just curious Paul, is it difficult to learn to play fretless?? I'm debating whether it would be worth the money to rent a fretless for the summer just to expand my horizons a bit.
It's easy to play a fretless. The hard part is playing in tune. When you've got fret markers, it's easy to come close, but to be completely in tune with everyone else takes some work. Obviously, lots of people have learned to do it, including every upright bassist on the planet, so there's no reason you can't too. Try one out in a store, if you can find one. That's what I did, and I thought to myself, "Hey, I can do this." So I defretted my bass. That's probably not the best route if you want to play fretted as well, but I really wanted a fretless.
I've always thought playing a violin has to be roughly impossible because just a small error in finger placement would make a big error in the sound. I envy professional violinists.
