I got here at ASC too late to meet Chris. I’ve only played an electric bass a tiny bit. A few years ago someone gave me one that suffered some kind of rattle with the knobs on the main body. I didn’t have an appropriate amp to work with it, but got it to play and sound decent through my hifi speakers. I in turn gave it away to someone who fixed it. Being used to an acoustic bass, the solid body on the electric struck me as really weird. I haven’t touched an upright bass in over 30 years. From time to time I’ve thought about getting an upright electric. They’re nice and compact. My mother used to drive me to youth symphony practice with the scroll and pegbox of the contrabass sticking out the window. I often wondered what drew me to such a logistically challenging instrument. It’s been so long now since I’ve played with any seriousness it’ll be almost like starting from scratch.
Oh yes, the frets vs fretless. The frets were strange to me too, but kind of nice. It’s fun to slide into notes on the fretless, but doing that and also trying to pluck with any volume was tough on the fingers! I got some private lessons for one brief period and the guy teaching me said my tone was slightly off on some notes. That was worrisome to me because I wasn’t sure if I could hear it correctly. Thinking back, I suspect it could have been an issue with the difference between just intonation and even temperament, something I was not at all aware of at that time, and I’m still not sure I understand the full implications of. In any case, if you’re listening to overtones and trying to get the next note tuned relative to those, you will be off in terms of even temperament, more so on some notes than others. I think that’s how it works.
What instrument do play?