To upright or not too

[6bass41r]

Hey all,
So I'm stuck in this predicament....
Any opinions are welcome...
I have always been a die hard electric player.
I started playing my junior year of highschool. I graduated with a degree in composition and I am now in the process of working on my masters in jazz performance on electric bass ( only strictly electric player in the school)..
Here a few of my concerns ...
1) being a bit over my head... School is hard. Being the youngest in the program probably with the smallest amount of "jazz"experience.. Tunes,piano, chops, harmonic understanding...
2)getting my ears together to gain a sense of freedom. Hearing intervals , melodies, harmony...
3) overall confidence
4) the big one ....why I started this thread..... Should I double ?!?!
Should I learn and make the upright thing happen.
I've played it a little bit... Never seriously and always just noodling on someone's bass . Every upright player always says "you have a great sound" this new motivation is from a clinic Ray Drummond gave at my school last week.... And he turned and said I have a good sound when I was just noodling on my buddies bass. Also my buddy at school has been playing upright for about a year and grew so much an was killing it . He was strictly an electric player.....


Any feedback possible would be awesome ! Thanks y'all

 

[Michael Case]

I started upright after playing electric for 10 years. I went to music school on upright after playing it for a little over a year. It's hard, but worth it. The thing is I REALLY wanted to play upright. I would say only if you want to study upright you should otherwise don't. I will say that being a noob on the upright held me back a little while studying in school, but I made it. It's not an instrument you pick up to get some extra gigs, it's a whole new path of study. IMHO, YMMV, you get the point.

 

[iiipopes]

I started playing electric bass when I was fourteen years old. When I turned fifty, I purchased one to learn to play with my jazz band at the time. After I got it set up and acquired sufficient faculty to take it to rehearsal, my only question to myself was, "Why did I wait so long?" The gigs are great, and I would not have gotten them if I had stayed only with electric bass, in spite of also playing tuba.