How to Play a Fretless Guitar? What Is The Difference From Other Guitars? What is E-Bow?

What is a Fretless Guitar?

A fretless guitar, as the name suggests, means a fretless guitar. More precisely, it would be more accurate to say guitar without a fret iron, we call it a fretless guitar by abbreviation. In English, the same guitar is called Fretless Guitar. Fret; The name was given to the irons that are used to determine the location of the notes on the guitar.

Since the positions of the notes are not determined by the fret irons in the fretless guitar, our musical hearing (ear) must be good to find the right note. When we press the note Do on a standard guitar, we get the Do sound whether we press the fret forward or a little backwards. Because the area of the Do sound has been determined thanks to the curtain irons. On the fretless guitar, on the other hand, we need to correctly guess the position of the Don note and press it exactly, pressing a little forward and a little back causes a coma Do sound. If you’re wondering what a coma is, take a look at this article.

The Sound of a Fretless Guitar

The timbre of the fretless guitar is very similar to the oud in that they have no frets and use similar strings. In fact, most people cannot distinguish between the fretless guitar and the oud sound at first. It is easier to play folk songs and Classical Turkish Music works with a fretless guitar, or rather to get the timbres and playing dynamics of this music, compared to fretted guitars. If we are already playing pieces with coma, fretless guitars or microtonal guitars should be our first choice.

How Do I Own a Fretless Guitar?

It should be our first choice, but how? Fretless guitars are not instruments that you can find in every music store like standard guitars. In general, fretless guitars are made to order, so you may need to go to an instrument maker and get a fretless guitar made. In either case, the prices will be slightly higher.

Another option would be to convert/convert your standard guitar to a fretless guitar, which is a very preferred method. You can do this yourself, but it may take some effort. Let me put it simply, its application may not be that simple.

In order to turn the fretted guitar into fretless, we first remove the fret irons, then fill the gaps with filler material. We lower the upper and lower threshold, as the strings will remain high. If your hand is prone to these works and you have time to deal with it, you can try it. If I were you, I would take it to an instrument maker and convert the fretted guitar to a fretless guitar, you can get it done at a reasonable price.

Fretless Guitar and Erkan Ogur

Today, fretless guitar culture is very common in our country compared to the past. There is only one name that makes the fretless guitar so popular and that is Erkan Ogur. He is known as the inventor of the fretless guitar. Erkan Oğur defined the fretless guitar as an “infinite fret guitar”. He has been playing with his fretless guitar both in his own albums and in the songs of other artists for many years. Two songs that immediately come to my mind are Erkan Ogur & Yavuz Cetin – Dunya (Dunya means the world) and Mustafa Sandal’s song Don’t Make Me Cry. Today, there are many fretless guitar players on the path opened by Erkan Oğur, you just have to search a little on the internet.

What is E-Bow?

The fretless guitar is widely used in our country in the form of classical guitar and electric guitar. We still use our fingers and pick while playing. Apart from finger and pick, we can also play fretless (fret guitar) using a device called E-Bow.

E-Bow is a vibration generating device. When we bring the vibrating part of this device closer to the strings of the guitar, the strings of the guitar also vibrate and sound is produced. But this requires fretless electro or fretless bass. More precisely, the wires must be all metal. The sound is very similar to Ney. If you listen to a guitarist who uses this device well, you can be convinced that the sound you listen to is the ney sound. I recommend you to search for fretless guitar and E-bow in youtube videos.