Pacman...warming up?

[Slaphappy]

Since I esteem your opinions, I was wondering if this makes sense to you...it's a quote from a thread on another board by a guitarist pertaining to guitar warmups, but wouldn't it also apply to us low-enders?

"-Warm Up. ALWAYS. You can do serious damage to your hands if you don't start by playing slow exercises to get the fingers warmed up. The 1,2,3,4 exercise you mentioned is a good thing to warm up with. Start instead at the 12th fret and work your way down and then back up so that you slowly stretch your fingers properly. Also, start slow and gradually move faster. You don't need to spend much time doing this exercise.. maybe five minutes or so."

He's talking about chromatics, but STARTING at the 12th fret to really ease your fingers into it...I never thought of that before. What do you think?

Dan

[Pacman]

Well, here's my initial thoughts:

I don't know if you can do serious damage to your hands by not warming up. It seems to me, especially with bass guitar (string bass is a bit different), that it takes very little strength to play - so it's not like lifting weights without warming up. That being said, it is a good idea to warm up, and the logic of starting at the 12th fret and working back seems sound to me. The strings are easier to fret in the middle.

However, the only thing you need to do to warm up is play your instrument, lightly and slowly, for about 5-10 minutes.

oh, and don't hold my opinions in too much esteem - I'm a hack!

[Slaphappy]

Nonsense, you're far from a hack...it takes one to know one!

Thanks for the advice! Nothing really new under the sun, but I thought that was an interesting idea...