Author: 1982toru0113@gmail.com

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 his thinking on why practicing 10 minutes a day beats one long weekly session, even when the total time is the same.

Here’s the question I want to dig into: 10 minutes of practice, 6 days a week — or one 60-minute session, once a week? Both add up to the same 60 minutes total. Which one actually gets you better results?

Short answer up front: the first one wins.

A Student’s Example

One of my students is a high schooler. Between schoolwork, volleyball club, and cram school, her schedule is packed. She’s on a competitive team in the city, so she’s up at 4am for practice from 6 to 8am every day, plus club after school. With a tournament roughly every two months, she barely gets a day off from volleyball, and on top of that she’s at cram school several times a week preparing for university entrance exams.

That extremely busy student still takes lessons with me twice a month — and every single lesson, her improvement is noticeable.

She’s got youth and drive on her side, sure, but she’s not someone with extraordinary natural musical talent, and she’s not aiming to go pro on bass either.

What she does have is this: she’s committed to practicing for just 10 minutes a day.

Let’s compare what that actually looks like on a calendar, against doing one 60-minute session a week.

Comparing the Two Schedules

Example: One 60-Minute Practice Session a Week

10 Minutes a Day, 6 Days a Week

Same total of 60 minutes a week, but the second schedule is far more likely to produce real improvement.

That’s because the second version is built around thinking about bass every single day.

In other words, it’s a schedule built around actual improvement. Six days a week, your calendar is quietly reminding you, “I want to get better at bass.”

If something unexpected comes up and you miss a day, that mindset of “I want to get better at bass” hasn’t gone anywhere — you’ve still got six chances a week reinforcing it.

And having one fully free day on Sunday means you get a real mental reset, plus a built-in makeup day if you missed a session during the week.

With the once-a-week version, on the other hand, there’s only a single day where you’re even thinking about getting better.

And worse: if you happen to catch a cold or have something come up that one Sunday, you could go a full two weeks without touching the bass. Two weeks without playing makes real improvement genuinely difficult.

Make Practice a Habit, Like Brushing Your Teeth

Nobody skips brushing their teeth before bed — it just feels gross not to. Practice can become that same kind of automatic habit.

How do you get there? Just keep doing a little bit every day, and the habit builds itself — assuming you actually enjoy playing bass, of course.

Once you start thinking, “I haven’t practiced today and it’s bugging me a little,” you’ve already crossed into a place where you’ll keep improving from here on out.

If 10 Minutes Feels Like Too Much…

At first, even 10 minutes can feel long if it’s not yet a habit.

If that’s the case, start with 5 minutes. Or even just 2–3 minutes — that’s fine too.

The chromatic scale exercise I recommend to beginners, for instance, only takes about 3 minutes. The high schooler I mentioned earlier built her habit over her first two months on exactly that kind of short chromatic exercise.

Once a habit like that takes hold, finding a little time for it every day stops feeling like an effort.

When practice feels like it’s not going anywhere, my advice is always the same: don’t try to do it all in one sitting — just chip away at it a little every day.

Building a habit is the hard part to do alone — having someone check in on your progress regularly is exactly what keeps a daily practice habit from quietly fading out.

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.

Check Out the Lesson Service →

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 covers the basics of tuning and reading tab notation for complete beginners.

This article covers tuning and how to read tab notation.

Tuning Your Bass

Before tuning, let’s learn the names of the strings. Looking at the bass from the front, from thinnest to thickest, they’re called the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th strings.

Here’s the view from above. When you’re holding the bass, the string closest to your face is the 4th string.

When tuning, the standard pitches are:

Adjust each string’s open-string pitch to match these notes.

For example, on the 4th string:

↑ This is too low, so tighten the tuning peg (the part being turned here) to bring the needle toward center.

↑ This, on the other hand, is too high, so loosen the peg instead.

↑ This is what you’re aiming for. Once the needle’s centered, do the same for the rest of the strings.

It doesn’t matter whether you start tuning from the 1st string or the 4th. Experienced players can tune in a few seconds, but when you’re just starting out, even one string can take a while. It gets faster the more you do it.

A Recommended Tuner

A clip-on tuner is the easiest option for a beginner — affordable, quick to respond, and reliable. Many beginner bass packages even come with one included.

Why Bother Tuning?

Just like a piano, the bass has a fixed scale (a sequence of pitches). Listen to the difference:

Piano:

Bass:

On a bass, you adjust the pitch by turning the tuning pegs shown here:

During transport, or after long playing sessions, the pegs can shift slightly and throw the pitch off without you noticing.

So make it a habit to tune every time before you practice or head into a rehearsal space.

Once You’re Tuned, Try Some Practice Phrases

Once you’re tuned up, let’s get into some practice phrases. As a beginner, learning to read tab notation will serve you well.

Most people aren’t comfortable with standard notation at first.

That’s exactly what tab notation is for. Here’s what it looks like.

Tab notation tells you exactly which string and which fret to play, using numbers — making it easy for beginners to read.

The bottom line of the tab represents the thickest string, the 4th string. The top line represents the thinnest, the 1st string.

Let’s Try Playing Some Tab

Let’s play through a few tab examples.

Tab Pattern 1

Here, you’re playing:

The open 4th string, 4 times
The open 3rd string, 4 times
The open 2nd string, 4 times
The open 1st string, 4 times

Tab Pattern 2

Here, you’re playing:

4th string, 3rd fret, 4 times
3rd string, 2nd fret, 4 times
3rd string, 3rd fret, 4 times
The open 2nd string, 4 times

Tab Pattern 3

Here, you’re playing:

4th string, 2nd fret, 4 times
2nd string, 4th fret, 4 times
1st string, 2nd fret, 4 times
2nd string, 2nd fret, 4 times

Try actually playing through these yourself!

Use the Position Markers

Tab notation is convenient, but early on, it can still be tricky to connect the numbers on the page to actual fret positions. That’s where the position markers (the dots inlaid on the neck) come in handy.

As mentioned earlier, most basses have position markers at the 3rd, 5th, and 7th frets counting from the headstock. There are more further up the neck too — use these as landmarks while reading tab, and it becomes much more efficient.

That covers the basics — next time, we’ll get into fundamental practice routines.

Getting your hands to actually find these positions cleanly and consistently is exactly the kind of thing real-time feedback speeds up.

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.

Check Out the Lesson Service →