Why doesn't a violin have frets like a guitar?

Question

A violin would be much easier to learn how to play with metal bars (frets) in between the notes.

Answer 1

Possibly, but you do things with a violin that you don't with a guitar, like glissando, where the violinist slides his or her fingers down the string while bowing smoothly to get a single swoop down the scale, including all the half and quarter tones along the way. If the instrument were fretted like a guitar, pressing the strings against the frets as you went by would produce tiny pauses where the note might not change, so you'd get a sort of stutter effect. (It's like playing a slide guitar, only more energetically -- a slide guitar has frets, and you have to be really careful NOT to press the strings against the frets for the reason I stated above. Besides, by the time you get to the point where you're playing more than nursery rhymes on the violin, you KNOW where all the notes are (same with guitar, for that matter -- how often does Eric Clapton look at his fingers while playing?)

Answer 2

If a violin had frets, the frets would limit a lot of playing ability. As violin pieces can be much, much more complicated than a guitar piece, it is actually easier for it without frets. Once you learn the basic fingering pattern, it is pretty much the same for the whole fingerboard.

Answer 3

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Answer 4

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