Japan Trip (2)

The girl holding the bass with surprising confidence sat on the demonstration stool, loosened up her fingers for a moment, and began playing the fretless bass.

The sound coming from the instrument was closer to random plunking than music. The song itself seemed to be the intro to ZUTOMAYO’s “Zanki” (残機), but the pitch was terribly off.

“It sounds weird.”

“This is really hard. The sound isn’t coming out properly, either. Is it because there are no frets?”

The girls were speaking to one another in Korean. The girl who had played the bass had confidently taken on the challenge of playing a fretless, but when the sound came out strangely, she looked embarrassed… Even so, he was quite surprised by her skill.

‘Judging by her playing form, she looks like she’s never played a fretless before, but there’s something unusual about her.’

A fretless bass is a type of bass with no frets embedded in the middle of the neck. The lack of frets allows it to produce a more classical sound, but it also makes it an instrument that demands far more precise fingering and a better sense of pitch.

For that reason, the fact that the girl was playing like that should be considered impressive rather than a sign that she had no idea what she was doing. Even though she was playing a fretless for the first time, she was still managing to create something that could be called music.

Judging by the way she played while appropriately adding slaps and vibrato, she seemed to be quite a skilled bassist. The poor sound was probably because she hadn’t adapted to the fretless bass yet.

“That’s because it’s a fretless bass. That’s how the instrument is.”...