warm up excercises

[thunderbird13]

I've had to stop playing for a week now as I have a dull pain in the joint of my little finger its getting better but it has served as a timely reminder to always make sure that I warm up before playing. The only technique that I have is just to go up and down the chromatic scales a couple of times. What does everyone else do to warm up ?

[Doddy]

I usually run a few scales in various intervals (3rd's,6th's etc.), a few octaves,
some chords up the neck. Really just playing over the entire board and crossing
strings.

[thunderbird13]

yeah thats what I thought - although I find it a bit frustrating as I end up just making a riff from the scale and then realising that I'm not exercising all my fingers !

[Doddy]

Even by making a riff you are still exercising your fingers. As long as you initially
take it steady it will have the same results as playing warm-up's.
As long as you don't pick the Bass up and run blazing semi quavers first thing,you shouldn't
have any problems. Even taking it easy on the first tune will warm you up.

[fatback]

Works well to alternate arpeggios and scales, so you go up the arpeggio to the ninth and down the scale and vice versa.

Also, alternating intervals with sequences is good (as in play up say three notes of the scale then start again on the next note playing three notes, up etc. then come down.) You can alternate sequences too, say three, then four, then three again etc. as you go up and down.

Lately I've been remembering to warm up my right hand too, by doing the above with quarter notes, eighths, triplets.

Hopefully by the time I've done all this the gig is over and I can have a pint. (oops, isn;t that jazz?)

fatback

[lowfer]

dia tonic triads moving up the finger board uses all the fingers on left and right hand, think of the bass line to IQ, you can use in varoius different grooves and intervals.

nathan