Fretless

An instrument with no frets at all, where the strings are stopped directly on the fingerboard and pitch is set by the player's ear.

It removes the hard edges that make fretted notes repeatable, so intonation becomes a skill rather than a construction detail, and sliding from note to note produces a continuous glissando impossible on a fretted instrument. Tone is softer and rounder, with a woody sustain, and the fingerboard wears in visible lines where notes are played most. Both basses and, less commonly, guitars are built this way.

Example: a fretless bass can slide a note up to pitch from below, giving a vocal swell that no fretted instrument can produce.

Fretless

See also