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 one genuinely positive effect that upright bass had on his electric bass playing.
There are plenty of good side effects from playing upright bass that carry over to electric bass, but one of the biggest is this: I became able to actually think in note names.
Coming up as a band kid, I grew up entirely on tab notation, so I’d built a habit of memorizing pitches as numbers — “C is the 3 (3rd string, 3rd fret),” “F# is the 4 (2nd string, 4th fret),” and so on.
But upright bass has no frets, and method books for it don’t use tab at all. So instead of “C is the 3,” I had to relearn it as “C is the note you fret with your pinky in half position on the A string,” and “F# is the note you fret with your pinky in first position on the D string.”
Getting comfortable reading bass clef, which I wasn’t used to at all, was genuinely tough. But the single biggest benefit of learning to think in note names instead of tab numbers was that my ability to handle chords on the fly improved enormously.
For example, if there’s a Dm chord and I want to build an improvised phrase on the spot, having the chord tones — D (root), F (3rd), A (5th) — come to mind instantly lets me build a phrase right then and there. And when they come up instantly like that, the resulting phrase naturally fits the harmony of the chord backing being played underneath.
If you’re stuck thinking only in tab the whole time, chord tones like these don’t come to mind quickly either.
In that sense, I’m glad picking up upright bass gave me this new perspective. It really does broaden your view as a musician — if you’re at all curious about upright or double bass, I’d genuinely encourage you to give it a try.
Switching to thinking in note names is the kind of internal shift that’s hard to confirm you’ve actually made on your own — having someone listen and quiz you on the spot is the fastest way to know it’s sticking.
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.