Different animals. I made the transition easily. No instructor so I know I'm doin' it wrong, but I make music on it and folks want to play with me playing it.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Bass guitar vs. upright bass
- Thread starter Greenman72
- Start date
Double Basses have curved fingerboards to match the curvature of the bridge. Electric Bass fingerboards are essentially flat by comparison.
Double Basses are fingered on a vertical plane while Electric basses are played on a horizontal one. Learning the Double Bass is more difficult to
accomplish because you need to have experience listening intently and recreating what your hearing with your hands. Playing a Double Bass with the bow is essential to play it in tune.
Double Basses are fingered on a vertical plane while Electric basses are played on a horizontal one. Learning the Double Bass is more difficult to
accomplish because you need to have experience listening intently and recreating what your hearing with your hands. Playing a Double Bass with the bow is essential to play it in tune.
Last edited:
I voted'20%'. If you like a challenge go for it.
Do it because you need to and are passionate about the instrument because it's going to take work.
Do it because you need to and are passionate about the instrument because it's going to take work.
i've played both professionally.
somewhere between zero and 20%, honestly.
the notes are in the same order. that's more than noting! It's easier to learn double bass after starting on electric bass than it would be to learn cello.
but honestly? That is such a small part of learning an instrument. I just counted 7 different instruments/tunings that I can play comfortably. learning where notes are is no biggie.
learning to make a nice sound, play with taste, etc etc, is unique to each instrument and requires work.
realistically i'd call it something like 5-10%.
somewhere between zero and 20%, honestly.
the notes are in the same order. that's more than noting! It's easier to learn double bass after starting on electric bass than it would be to learn cello.
but honestly? That is such a small part of learning an instrument. I just counted 7 different instruments/tunings that I can play comfortably. learning where notes are is no biggie.
learning to make a nice sound, play with taste, etc etc, is unique to each instrument and requires work.
realistically i'd call it something like 5-10%.
Some people like to pretend they know a lot by claiming that "the electric bass is the direct descendant of the upright bass, and isn't related to the guitar at all". It sort of sounds like saying that a son has nothing to do with his mother just because he carries his father's family name, doesn't it?
This is one of the rare cases on TB where I think that the poll is pretty close to reality I play both and have for many years, notes are the same but most everything else is pretty different. One thing not mentioned in the comments above is the scale difference (DB typically is 41" or so depending on the instrument, and a typical EB is 34"). Much harder to play physically, requires more endurance and at least compared to a fretted EB, much harder to play in tune. I love both, they each serve much different roles, but they are much more different than they are alike.
Even after taking up fretless electric bass(and having had a jump on that by half-ass noodling on slide guitar for years), I can tell you that upright is still its own beast with physicality and technique requisites far beyond electric bass guitar. The melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic content may be similar, let alone is the foundation for what is done on all types of electrics, but the very shape, and how you literally embrace it in order to play it, changes everything.
Oh yeah…and harp? Funny you should mention it. That is its own mindfork. My wife plays them, a pedal concert grand, one from 1926(that Harpo Marx reportedly played on once), and a newer electric one, plus a smaller electric lever harp. Sort of like a piano placed on its side, and then you pluck it, and change pitch on strings like a pedal steel guitar. I've fooled around on them, I don't know how she does it. I've set her up with an effects pedalboard, that's been the new adventure, trying to figure out something that hasn't been done before.
The old electric to doublebass conundrum. I also say maybe 5% is transferable. I understand that a little upright bass can go a long way. I recently saw an amateur musician sing and play the bass and although it was horribly out of tune, plugged unnecessarily into an amplifier, found it to be quite charming. The audience didn't know she had zero sound or intonation. They were amazed to see a bass and didn't know anything about what they were hearing. In fact there are a lot of musicians who play with upright bass players without developed sound or concept and terribly out of tune and don't care. It's a novelty to most. But that gambit will only get you so far, and maybe that's enough. But I think you cheat yourself out of learning one of the greatest instruments one can play, the doublebass. Studying music on a doublebass is a mirror that teaches you more about yourself, more about life, more about everything than one can imagine. It has been the core of my existence for decades now and I will continue to study and play this instrument until I can't. It has been a rudder and a keel that has helped me navigate life, taken me to far off distant lands, to dark bars in Spain and tiny pubs in Ireland, open fields in Virginia and concert halls in Europe. I'm not a great player, but being committed to beauty and expression has been enough to get me in places I never thought I'd see. I just don't think ANY of that would have happened on an electric bass. The size, the beauty, the acoustics, the emotion. Nobody can ignore a doublebass note under a singer, guitar, trumpet, piano, drum, fiddle, etc. One well placed note changes any room, any ensemble.
Speaking of harp, it reminds me of harmonica (mouth harp). Curiously I could never play the harmonica to save my life, even though I could play some woodwinds and used to play the trombone.
Speaking of woodwind, I think it's another case of "similar but not directly transferable". I began on the Japanese shakuhachi, but quickly found the Chinese xiao to be my "at home" woodwind. The xiao shares a very similar fingering with the Chinese dizi, but I still cannot make the dizi to even make a stable sound!
Speaking of woodwind, I think it's another case of "similar but not directly transferable". I began on the Japanese shakuhachi, but quickly found the Chinese xiao to be my "at home" woodwind. The xiao shares a very similar fingering with the Chinese dizi, but I still cannot make the dizi to even make a stable sound!
There's a big difference between the two but there's also a lot of crossover. You're at a huge advantage if you already play electric. I was able to get a lot of satisfaction out of the DB quite shortly after beginning to play (I had already been playing electric for many years) and was gigging on DB about three months after beginning my studies. I can't say I was playing it particularly well after three months, but I was getting the job done. 
All that to say, don't be discouraged: if you're curious then give it a go. If you don't like it you can simply sell the bass.
All that to say, don't be discouraged: if you're curious then give it a go. If you don't like it you can simply sell the bass.
I play keys where you can have similar 'crossovers' in that everything has the same scale and black and white keys.
Having said that, a full concert grand piano, a B3, and a 60-key synth with after touch and bender wheels are three VERY different instruments, even though ostensibly 'you play them the same way'.
A solid body bass guitar on a strap and a 7/8 upright you stand behind tune to the same notes and you play them both arco in roughly the same manner, but here again, they are very different beasts, and we haven't brought up using a bow yet.
With work, you can play the different keyboards fluently, and both basses too, but they're far more different one to the next than they are alike.
Having said that, a full concert grand piano, a B3, and a 60-key synth with after touch and bender wheels are three VERY different instruments, even though ostensibly 'you play them the same way'.
A solid body bass guitar on a strap and a 7/8 upright you stand behind tune to the same notes and you play them both arco in roughly the same manner, but here again, they are very different beasts, and we haven't brought up using a bow yet.
With work, you can play the different keyboards fluently, and both basses too, but they're far more different one to the next than they are alike.
Are you aware of Emily Hopkins (the harp lady) on Youtube? She also reviews effects (and designed one with Old Blood Noise). On her last stream she had on a foot-cam showing the pedal work and described her effort and constant thinking & planning on a modulating piece that's going on while we hear carefree music.
Outstanding advice! From J_Bass:
Upright bass?.............lessons!!!!!!!!!!!
"Upright, completely different." "Much more difficult to play the double bass."
I used to have an upright. Love the sound! Upright is the true bass!
I said, "used to have an upright". Was way, way, way too hard for me to play! But, my wife thought that it was excellent living room décor! ha ha ha Sold it after about 15 yrs.
When I bought my upright, I thought it would be easy transition. It wasn't.
One thing it wound up reinforcing to me is that the bass guitar is a guitar.
I had an easier time translating what I knew from bass to guitar than I did to doghouse.
Made me better appreciate what those early upright guys had to do.
One thing it wound up reinforcing to me is that the bass guitar is a guitar.
I had an easier time translating what I knew from bass to guitar than I did to doghouse.
Made me better appreciate what those early upright guys had to do.
Oh yes, we keep tabs on her vids, actually more for just checking out the obscure/under the radar pedals that she's managed to aquire(as opposed to the fact that she applies them to harp, or any particular way she uses them). My wife was using a wah and delay on her 1926 Lyon & Healy(fitted with a Fishman pickup) before Emily was born, before even I met her. Once we were together, I've been fixing her up/experimenting with all sorts of stuff. It's not that unusual, there's been Zeena Parkins who has been in the NYC/John Zorn/Fred Frith avant-garde universe for years, doing abstract outside style noise, Deborah Henson-Conant went on tour with Steve Vai, playing Hendrix-ish stuff with a smaller lever harp that is worn with a strap, and there's a younger player, Laura Somogyi, that gets deep into looping and a wide variety of other boxes. I saw her demoing at the EQD booth at NAMM one year. The guy in Florence and the Machine, I don't think he uses anything outrageous.
Oddly enough, when she has done sessions, most of the time she's played it straight. Before we were together, she'd worked on a Jon Anderson solo album (he plays a smaller Celtic harp as well). Later on she did some tracks with Harold Budd(a pioneer in "ambient" music who had worked with Brian Eno), and then a big power ballad by G'n'R(on the album that nobody bought). Axl wasn't at the studio that day, but we met him later on. We did conjure up some freaky stuff using a pitch bend pedal, flanger, and a delay for a piece by Australian band The Church(she's performed live with them as well). She played on an album, and went on a brief tour, for a little-known project by original Tool bass player Paul D'Amour called Lusk.
Last edited:
the physicality of double bass is completely different. you use the larger muscle groups more than your arm and hand muscles as compared to playing bass guitar. there are of course many transferable concepts and skills, probably as much as if you were switching to tuba.
And now are you single? My EX wife was devastated after I bought the $30K 1820 hungarian db back in the 2010's.
If you're already annoyed with too many calls for gigs, definitely don't get that upright.
