vic wrote:
When you've played for a long time the fretboard is almost like the keyboard of a typewriter....you just know where the notes are...almost like playing blindfolded. We certainly do not need the markers come to think of it. Take the upright base for example...no frets and no markers... ?
One can do without, but you get used to those dots and learn to rely on them. I played a classical guitar recently, it had just one dot - on the side, at the 7th fret. I was all at sea for a while. With classical instruments the neck joins the body at the octave, so there is an implied marker for the 12th fret, but still I got lost (and I don't spend a lot of time up at the dusty end of the neck anyway).
Probably if I'd never come across dot markers I wouldn't need them.
I think there's a large amount of ear and adjusting going on with things like double bass. It's impossible to hit the note exactly every time, even for the best players, and I suspect they must develop a technique for adjusting on the fly in the milliseconds after they fret and sound the note.
I do not mean to disparage players of double basses, cellos etc. Indeed I have nothing but admiration for the technique that players of such instruments must master.
