Most bass guitars have frets to lock every note into place. Take them away and the instrument changes character entirely: pitch bends like a voice, notes slide and moan, and a good player can sing through the low end the way an upright or a fretless cello does. Prog, forever chasing texture and the sound of virtuosos stretching their tools, gave the fretless bass room to lead rather than simply hold down the root. The best fretless bass moments in prog are the recorded passages where that woody, vocal tone steps forward as a melodic voice in its own right. Here are five essential performances, plus a wider field of fretless players worth chasing down.

Percy Jones — “Nuclear Burn”

The fretless fusion blueprint. Percy Jones opened the jazz-rock ensemble Brand X’s 1976 debut, Unorthodox Behaviour, with the racing instrumental “Nuclear Burn,” and his bass is the first thing that grabs you: liquid, rubbery lines that dart between the beats rather than anchoring them. Those early Brand X recordings were cut on a fretless Fender Precision, and Jones used it to smear pitch and bend phrases in a way fretted players simply cannot. In Louder, fellow bassist Nick Beggs counts him among the most influential players on the instrument, praising the speed and singular voice of his lines. It stands as a masterclass in the fretless as a lead instrument.

Colin Bass — “Eye of the Storm”

A singing low end inside symphonic prog. Colin Bass joined Camel for their 1979 album I Can See Your House from Here, and on “Eye of the Storm” he reaches for a Wal fretless bass, credited by name in the sleeve notes, bringing a warmer, more vocal bottom to a band already rich in melody. Where many prog bassists of the era chased a bright, trebly attack, Bass leans the other way here, letting notes swell and glide beneath the keyboards and guitar rather than simply marking the root. The fretless gives the track a smooth, liquid undertow, more sung than plucked. It is one of the genre’s most tasteful uses of the instrument.

Colin Edwin — “Pure Narcotic”

Fretless as atmosphere in modern prog. Australian-born bassist Colin Edwin played fretless almost exclusively across Porcupine Tree’s early catalogue, and on “Pure Narcotic,” from the 1999 album Stupid Dream, you can hear why it suited them: his line hums and slides beneath the melody, unhurried and songful, more felt than noticed. Rather than drive the track, the fretless colours it, adding a soft, boneless warmth that became part of the band’s signature. Classic Rock later placed Stupid Dream among its hundred greatest albums of the 1990s. Edwin’s understated fretless work is a quiet reason the record still holds up decades on.

Steve DiGiorgio — “The Philosopher”

The man who dragged the fretless into metal. Steve DiGiorgio is credited simply as fretless bass on Death’s 1993 album Individual Thought Patterns, and on tracks like “The Philosopher” his playing does something almost unheard of in extreme metal: it slides and sings between the riffs instead of merely doubling them. He is widely credited as the first bassist to bring the fretless into heavy and extreme metal, and here the instrument’s vocal quality cuts clean through a dense, technical mix. AllMusic ranks the album among extreme metal’s most creative and musically accomplished. His fretless remains the template for the technical metal bassists who followed.

Dominic “Forest” Lapointe — “Elusive Reverence”

Fretless virtuosity at the technical extreme. On “Elusive Reverence,” from Beyond Creation’s 2014 album Earthborn Evolution, Dominic “Forest” Lapointe plays a six-string fretless with startling fluency, threading fast, melodic runs and clean tapped passages through the Canadian band’s dense progressive extreme metal. Rather than lock onto root notes or shadow the guitars, he writes lines that move and breathe, treating the fretless as a lead voice even at breakneck tempo. His tone keeps the woody, vocal character of the instrument intact where most bassists would reach for something harder and more percussive. It is proof that the fretless survives at the most demanding end of the genre.

More fretless bass in prog

The fretless runs as a quiet thread through the genre. King Crimson’s Tony Levin moves between fretless bass and the Chapman Stick, bending notes into his angular parts, while Jeroen Paul Thesseling brings a seven-string fretless to the microtonal extreme metal of Obscura and Pestilence. Sean Malone made the fretless central to Cynic’s Focus and to his own Gordian Knot project, a touchstone for melodic metal bassists. And in symphonic prog, Jonas Reingold reaches for a fretless with The Flower Kings whenever a line calls for a smoother, more vocal tone. Any of these players rewards a slower, closer listen.

Go deeper

Meet the players behind these performances at our prog musicians hub, then widen the picture with the finest 12-string guitar moments, the best acoustic guitarists and the most striking unusual instruments in prog. Cue up the tracks themselves among the greatest progressive rock songs, or browse the essential progressive rock albums to hear these players in full. If these performances leave you wanting the stories behind the musicians and their eras, the “Beyond the Sound” book series maps them from the first wave to the present day.

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