Hub Hildenbrand

Projects:

I got my first fretless instrument when I was around 20. I don´t remember where I got this idea from. I bought an electric guitar and removed the frets. Later guitar maker Jens Kummer added an ebony fretless fingerboard. The day I got it, I went to a jam session and found out that playing this instrument

is a difficult task. It was fun but not one chord was in tune. Still, I think fretless instruments to be melodic instruments with quite rudimentary harmonic possibilities compared to fretted ones. That´s why we find fretless instruments very prominently in cultures which approach music in a more linear fashion – in India the sarod and in oriental music the oud. Both of them are very beautiful sounding instruments and very inspiring for my music. Up until now I have four fretless guitars:

Fretless Acoustic Guitar (Frameworks guitar design)

Up until now this guitar never appeared on CD although played very frequently at concerts with the Hub Hildenbrand Trio. During my lessons with Nuri Karademirli (oud) he advised me to play fretless guitar, this way I don´t have to work so hard on my archtop jazz guitar by bending the strings to get the turkish microtones. He said that I will get very famous with it. So I defretted one and I`m still waiting for the fame ;-)

see video at YouTube >

all photos: Bert Brüggemann

Fretless Classical Guitar

This is my western Oud. After being played for a musical at Neuköllner Oper (Berlin) it stayed almost two years untouched. This changed when I finally decided to remove the frets (later the holes were filled very professionally by Alexander Markusch with a brighter wood). On this guitar I am changing the tunings frequently. After playing it more in an oud style, I explored a new way by striking it more lightly and using my fingernail of the left hand index finger on the plain nylon strings to gain more sustain (sarod style).

sound sample:

Fretless Acoustic Octave Guitar

This was inspired by a cassette tape Babu Kamal a tabla player from Bangladesh gave to me as a birthday present. It was Mridul Kanti Chakrobarty playing a Dotara (a folk instrument from Bangladesh). I had a classical octave guitar and made some changes to get that sound. I removed the frets (again the holes were filled by Alexander Markusch), put on 4-5 metal strings and changed the tuning.

sound sample:

Duitarod:

The name Duitarod comes from:
- Dui ("two" in Bengali, two necked guitar)
- (G)uitar and
- (S)arod

This instrument was made for me by Mukunda Biswas, a guitar maker in Kolkata (India). I gave him a sketch of it and we discussed the details. He really did a great job. And I am very thankful to him for putting in so much effort and inspiration. Basically it is a guitar and a sarod type fretless neck in one instrument. Additional it has 12 resonance strings and two cikari strings (played as drone and rhythmically). The Duitarod reminds many people of Pat Metheny´s pikasso guitar (built by Linda Manzer) although this is a different conception. I am happy to have guitar maker Jens Kummer doing repair and modifications of the Duitarod. I just made solo recordings with it and I am planning to release it in 2012.