Hi,
A quick but slightly dim question I'm afraid.....Are the notes the same on the electric bass guitar as the acoustic double bass ie EADG? My reason for asking is that I'm thinking of buying a cheap electric bass guitar to start some basic learning on before buying an acoustic bass.
Thanks in advance.

Yup, I believe so.

nick

There are other varieties (as there are of upright basses), e.g. five-string, but cheap ones will be as you say. Also, some owners choose to use variant tuning on upright bass, and some composers ask for it. AFAIK, there is no reason that you should not also vary electric bass tuning if you had a good reason and enough mental flexibility.* Note that upright basses are not fretted, while electric basses come both with and without frets. If you see something looking like an upright bass with frets, it's probably a violone, the corresponding member of the viol family.

My son, who started on 'cello but now plays both electric and upright bass, points out that while some aspects of the two instruments are similar, the usual fingerings are not. The strings on the electric bass are of a length such that one can use all four fingers in the lowest position, with a semitone between each; on the upright bass, the strings are longer, and the normal fingering is 1, 2 and 4 up to the shoulder and 1,2,3 (not using 4) past the shoulder. My use of 'cello fingering (all four fingers) from the fifth to the minor seventh above the open string is unorthodox, though extremely useful for quick passages.

* I once found myself in an orchestra playing Strauss's "Also sprach Zarathustra", in which the basses have a fugue within the lowest line descending to B. This part was intended for a five-string bass with a low B-string, but there was none in the section. My bass has a long fourth string normally tuned to C, so I was chosen to tune down and play that part. The fugue comes fairly early, and the prospect of playing the rest of the piece with every note on that string a semitone away from where I expected it was not attractive, but retuning in the middle of the performance was almost equally stressful.

Thanks both, for your responses.

Yes - the standard tuning for a 4-string electric bass guitar (which I can play) is EADG, the same as an acoustic double bass (which I cannot!).

Many thanks.