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Orchestral manoeuvres In the dark


lownote
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Playing Dereham Blues Festival yesterday we did one late night nightclub gig in almost complete darkness.  Eek. But playing fretless, as is what I do, came in very useful.  Interestingly if I consciously tried to feel for the right note things went pearshaped, while leaving it to mussel memory worked fine.   

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1 hour ago, lownote said:

Playing Dereham Blues Festival yesterday we did one late night nightclub gig in almost complete darkness.  Eek. But playing fretless, as is what I do, came in very useful.  Interestingly if I consciously tried to feel for the right note things went pearshaped, while leaving it to mussel memory worked fine.   

I do find the same. Playing fretless in the dark is less scary than fretted for me too. “Wrong” notes can be slid into “right” ones, and with a bit more top rolled off, slight intonation imperfections can be less noticeable. 
Whereas I find a wrongly fretted note is more obvious. 

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Muscle memory works well but fluorescent dots work better! Had my fretless jazz fitted with fluorescent side and fingerboard dots, and now I love a dark stage not least because dots floating in the dark look rather cool.

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On 10/07/2022 at 11:58, oldslapper said:

I do find the same. Playing fretless in the dark is less scary than fretted for me too. “Wrong” notes can be slid into “right” ones, and with a bit more top rolled off, slight intonation imperfections can be less noticeable. 
Whereas I find a wrongly fretted note is more obvious. 

 

 It might be less scary to you but, to the other musicians, "wrong" notes and "slight intonation imperfections" might be really scary to them.

:D

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