This article is written by Toru Hoshino, a jazz bassist and instructor based in Japan who teaches online lessons to students worldwide. In this article, he shares 5 reasons why teaching yourself upright bass from zero is genuinely difficult.
As the title says: picking up upright bass entirely from scratch on your own is genuinely tough. This isn’t really a pitch for my own lesson service — it’s a direct answer to a question I got recently: “I just bought an upright bass, and I don’t know how to start practicing. I managed to get it tuned since that part’s the same as electric bass, but what do I do from there?”
Honestly, taking lessons is the fastest route — but jumping straight into paid lessons can feel like a big step, so let’s first walk through exactly why self-teaching is so difficult in the first place.
Contents
5 Reasons Self-Teaching Upright Bass Isn’t Recommended
1. It’s huge
2. It’s hard to judge the right distance between your body and the instrument
3. It’s hard to know where to place your left and right hands
4. The strings are thick and long
5. There are no frets
1. It’s Huge
It’s simply a massive instrument, so how to actually produce sound, how to hold it, even how to carry it around — it’s a mystery on every front. You genuinely have no reference point for how to even handle the thing.
2. It’s Hard to Judge the Right Distance Between Your Body and the Instrument
With upright bass, you stand the instrument up and lean it against your body — but figuring out exactly where that “right” position even is takes real trial and error. Finding the sweet spot where your left hand can fret properly and your right hand can produce a good sound is genuinely difficult.
3. It’s Hard to Know Where to Place Your Left and Right Hands
You hold your left hand up around face height and your right hand down around hip height — it’s a strange, unintuitive stance. Figuring out the right spot to produce a good sound in that somewhat awkward position is hard enough, and on top of that, the height of your left elbow and the motion of your right hand are complex enough that it takes a while before any of it feels intuitive.
4. The Strings Are Thick and Long
The strings are thicker and longer than on a guitar or electric bass. That’s part of what gives the instrument such a satisfying acoustic tone, but it also means there’s real weight and resistance — pressing firmly enough to get a clean, non-buzzing note takes real effort.
5. There Are No Frets
Without frets like a guitar or electric bass has, it’s genuinely hard to tell where one pitch ends and the next begins. That means you need dedicated practice just to train your intonation — and figuring out how to actually structure that practice is its own challenge on top of everything else.
I taught myself guitar and electric bass from scratch, eventually to the point of playing live shows — but upright bass was a different story entirely; I couldn’t pull it off the same way.
So, as I mentioned up top: if you’re serious about learning it, taking lessons really is the faster path.
Sorting out your posture, hand position, intonation, and reading all at once is a lot to figure out alone — having a teacher watch and correct each of these in real time is exactly where the self-taught route runs out of road.
Want Personalized Feedback on Your Playing?
This is exactly the kind of thing that’s hard to fix alone — and where having a teacher makes all the difference.
At Line on Bass, I offer an online lesson service where you send me a video of your playing, and I give you specific, detailed feedback — every single day if you want.
Students from around the world are using this to fix exactly these kinds of issues and steadily improve their jazz bass skills.