Electric/Upright Frustration

[Claypool45]

I've recently made the switch from electric to upright. My current teacher has me work with upright fingerings (no ring until thumb position, all fingers press down on the string) while playing electric. It was very difficult to switch to that style because I had been playing 1 finger per fret Jaco style (hitting octaves with my middle and pinkie). I also had problems with muting at first, but utilized the floating thumb method and cleared that up.

My others techniques, that I worked so hard to perfect are useless now because of the fingering. I can't slap because the lack of left hand muting causes the strings to ring. I also can't play flamenco style because of the same problem. Right now I sound like a total newbie using these other techniques. It's very frustrating to know that I used to play these styles well and now I can't.

Any suggestions? Should I drop those techniques, or should I just keep working on the upright fingerings until I get it right?

[Buogon]

You are entering a new world with playing the upright bass, this instrument is a different animal from the EB and it's takes another way of thinking to apply this technique.
It will be frustrating in the begining but stick with it and you will enjoy this instrument.

[Alvaro Martín Gómez A.]

When I started studying the double bass, one of the first things that my master told me was: "If you play bass guitar, you must stop practicing while you get used to the DB fingering. Do you gig with electric bass? That's OK. You can gig every time you like, but stop practicing fretting hand technique for a while".

Also, he makes all of his students to wear a rubber band or something similar while playing DB for keeping both middle and ring finger joined. I'm another electric bass' OFPF technique follower, so it took me like six months to get rid of that rubber band. Now I don't have any problems switching between the OFPF and Simandl fingerings.

Hope this helps.