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| Warming Up If your gig has an 8:00 downbeat, you should have your instrument in your hands and be warming up at 7:30. Try to allow for this in planning your schedule. If done properly, a warm up routine is a very valuable habit to develop. Dancers and atheletes stretch before a workout. Musicians should warm up too. Once you’ve resolved to do it, try to develop a set routine that you run through. The major scales, exercises, arpeggios, and modes make excellent warm up routines. They stretch the fingers and reinforce necessary musical concepts which you absorb subconciously. A bad warm up routine does no good. As a young novice I would pick up my guitar routinely just before the downbeat. The other players were all warming up, but I was too dumb to notice. When I did warm up, I played some crap that I would always play. One day the keyboard player busted me and I realized that I was screwing up. I began to use the scales as the basis of my routine and I have never been sorry. |
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