Guitars are one of the most well-known musical instruments in the world. This popularity of guitars has led to various experimentations over the years. One of those experimentations, fretless guitars, can be defined in some way as guitars without limitations.
Fretless guitars aren’t new, but you don’t see them often. Today rock, country and jazz musicians all prefer fretted guitars, but fretless guitars have become popular with new age and alternative music. The soulful whining of a fretless guitar can add ambience that can’t be achieved with a regular guitar. The sound of a fretless is similar to a steel guitar with attitude. You can easily make a fretless guitar. All they do is remove the frets, plug the holes and sand the neck.
The first thing that strikes you is how extremely difficult it is to find the intonation of each note, especially when you are used to frets where the range of each note is much wider. We also have to learn to stop using bends (bending), surely it is very complicated at first because it is something we do without thinking. Keep in mind that the size of the strings is very high and it is almost impossible to do bending.
Watch the video below and listen how ridiculous fretless guitar sounds: