A necessary component to being able to play a fretless instrument in pitch is being able to sing in pitch. Throughout my past training the quality music teachers I have had pretty much said the same thing, in a nutshell, “to be a good musician you have to hear it before you play it”. In other words to play in pitch you need to hear the note in your head then play it. To help my students gain this ability I, at the beginning of each lesson, conduct “Roll-Call” . Roll-Call is based on the musical development of each student and ranges from simple tasks to more complex tasks. An example of a simple roll-call would be the playing of a single note on the piano and having the student sing that note back to me. This will advance to my playing a melodic interval (a 3rd or a 5th) and having the student sing back the two notes (in time naming the interval as well). Next they graduate onto harmonic intervals (I’ll play two notes simultaneously then they sing back each note and name the interval). This will advance to the first five notes of a major scale then onto complete scales, modes, chords, etc. Roll-Call is not just for my fretless players. I conduct Roll-call for all my students, guitar, mandolin, electric bass, etc. Music teachers, feel free to steal this teaching technique, I did. I’d like to take credit for it but I can’t, it came from my professor of music theory back in my college days.

Peace and good tunes to you, D. Patrick