The 15 Minute Warmup: Electric Edition
How to make the first tune of every gig as good as the fifth — using a 15-minute warmup that replaces 45 minutes of Juilliard scales. The same routine I run before every gig.
$47 · one-time · yours forever · 30-day money-back
This is for you if…
- You've been playing electric bass for at least a year
- You can read fingerings, know basic notation, and can hold the instrument and produce a tone
- You're an intermediate adult — day job, a band that meets on Tuesdays, gigs on weekends
- You're a gigging player who knows the first tune of every set is the worst tune
- You're a home player losing the first ten minutes of every session to cold-finger noodling
- You're coming back to the bass after years off and your hands forgot what they used to know
- You're a teacher whose students walk into every lesson cold
Maybe not if…
- You're a six-month beginner — get through a beginner method first, save this for later
- You already have a daily routine that works for you and your hands feel great every session
- You're shopping for advanced modal vocabulary or jazz reading — this is the 15 minutes you do before that
The tax you're already paying.
Yeah, yeah — warming up matters. We all know. I'm not going to give you the lecture.
But who wants to play 30 minutes of scales before getting to play any actual music? I sure as hell don't. I did 45 minutes of scales every morning at Juilliard and watched the clock the entire time. The reason most bass players skip the warmup isn't that we don't know it matters — it's that every warmup we've seen is half an hour of joyless scales. And nobody has 30 minutes to spare on something that's not even the practice.
For years, the first tune of every gig was my worst tune. I'd never warmed up before walking on — because no warmup existed that didn't feel like punishment — so the first tune did the work. Every gig. It took me a long time to figure out what was actually happening. Bass players don't really talk about it. We just live with it.
You stopped noticing because you've been paying it for years.
You pay this every time you pick up the bass cold. The room hears it. You don't, because you're inside the playing. But it's real, and it's the reason you clicked into this page in the first place.
Four taxes, paid every session. The 15 minutes you skip aren't free. They're the tax bill.
Your warmup is probably a song.
A few years ago a Reddit thread asked the question: "What do you play when you pick up your bass and you haven't warmed up?" Three hundred and fifty-three bass players answered. Almost every answer was the same kind of thing — a song they've played so many times their cold hands can still play it.
Yours is probably one of these:
That's not a warmup. That's a stalling tactic. It's a song you've played a thousand times so your cold hands can still get through it — and you play it while your fingers wake up. Then practice starts.
It works, kind of. But it only warms up the parts of the fretboard the song uses. It doesn't touch your right hand much. It doesn't move you through intervals or keys you don't usually play in. And it stops the moment the song ends.
The 15-minute warmup is what you'd build if you tried to make a routine out of your safe tune. Same press-play feeling. Same "I don't have to think." But across every part of the bass — and ending when you're actually warmed up, not when the song does.
So I built what bass players don't have.
Fifteen minutes · Ten exercises · One press-play
Same routine I run before every gig with Peter Cincotti — different city, different bass, different amp every night. If nothing else is consistent, this is.
Every exercise pairs a written warmup line with a chord vamp you improvise on. Same chord, same backing track, except now you're inventing instead of executing. Every exercise comes with two audio tracks — one with me playing, one without. Play along when you want a guide. Run the no-bass version when you want to be the bassist.
The part nobody believes until they hear it: these tracks actually groove. Funky Fifths feels like a Vulfpeck cut. Open Up has a 6/8 lilt that's almost meditative. If somebody walked into the room while you were running this, they wouldn't think you were practicing — they'd think you had a record on.
The full warmup.
10 exercises · written line + improv vamp · backing tracks with bass and without · PDFs + editable Finale files
The first 90 seconds. A slow Em7 groove with a simple written line on top — your hands move, your ear tunes in, your body settles into the routine. Once the line feels easy, you start improvising over the same vamp. This is where the press-play habit gets built.
A chromatic line that visits every region of the fretboard — not built for speed, built for awareness. By the end of this exercise you've touched every fret you'll play on the gig. The vamp under it is harmonically open so anything you improvise sounds intentional.
The "spider" exercise every bass teacher has handed out for forty years — but written over a groove instead of a click. Independence in all four fingers, no chord-tone shortcuts, no faking it. The vamp turns the drill into a feel exercise too.
Finger permutations — 1-2-3-4, 1-3-2-4, 1-4-2-3, all the orderings most players never drill — across all four strings. The left hand finishes this exercise feeling like it can find any note on the neck without thinking.
Strict alternation, index-middle-index-middle, across a moving line. The basic right-hand mechanic most players assume is fine — and isn't, because they never warm it up. If you play with a pick, this maps cleanly to alternate picking.
Raked patterns — 1-1-2-1, 2-1-1-2 — that build right-hand economy. When you start applying these on the gig, repeated notes stop sounding like effort and start sounding like part of the line.
The right-hand bonus exercise. 2-2-1-2 patterns — an order most players never train. There's a "Skip this one if it's too difficult" note printed on the page; the warmup still works without it. As your right hand grows into it, this is the one that gets your plucking past where it's been stuck.
Fifths across every key on the circle — not just the rock-band defaults. The vamp grooves like a Vulfpeck cut. This is the exercise that pulls you out of E minor / G major and gets your hands comfortable in the keys your singer drops the tune to on Saturday.
Ninth-interval stretches. The kind of jump most players' hands aren't warmed up to make. After this, the awkward leap in the bridge of whatever standard you're playing stops being awkward.
The graduation. A full-neck workout in 6/8 with a meditative lilt under it — by the end of minute fifteen, your hands have moved through every region of the bass, your right hand has done all four plucking variants, and you've improvised over five different vamps. You're not warmed up. You're ready.
Total: 10 exercises · PDFs + editable Finale files · backing tracks with bass and without · master press-play track
These tracks groove.
30 seconds of Funky Fifths — exercise 8 of the pack, with bass.
Funky Fifths · Exercise 8 · With Bass
If it sounds like a cheesy warmup drill, close the tab and don't buy it.
15 minutes is the work-up.
Here's how I think about it now. When my students start playing Autumn Leaves with a full-aggression walking line on the first measure, I stop them. That's like walking into the gym and putting 135 on the bench on your first lift. You don't start with your max. You work up to it.
15 minutes is the work-up. It's not extra. It's the first part of the playing — the part you've been skipping.
Here's why every exercise comes with two tracks. The one without bass is for the days you want to play. The one with bass is for the days you don't — when you just need to hear it done right and let me carry it.
Spec by spec, against everything else you might be running instead.
| This | Hubbard "Intense" | Mooney Daily | Free YouTube | Doing nothing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time per session | 15 min | 60+ min | 30+ min | varies | 0 |
| Structured progression | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Backing tracks (with bass) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Backing tracks (no bass) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Improv built in | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Built for adult intermediates | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | mixed | — |
| Editable Finale files | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Price | $47 once | ~$35 | ~$25 | $0 | $0 |
The Hubbard book is great — for the day you want a workout. Mooney is great — for the day you want to drill walking lines in twelve keys. Free YouTube is great — for the day you want to watch a video. None of them are warmups. They're exercise books and method content. The 15 minutes you do before any of that doesn't exist anywhere else.
Not for the 450.
Worth saying out loud since I'm here: there are 450 people in the NBA. Everyone else is semi-pro, hobbyist, or amateur. Nobody writes basketball training programs for the 450 and expects the rest of us to use them. But that's what every bass warmup book does. Hubbard wrote his for the 450. Mooney wrote his for the 450. Your "Intense" warmup books were written for the 450.
This one is for the rest of us. Cover bands, church bands, wedding bands, basement bassists with day jobs. The bassist who plays a few hours a week and a few gigs a month and just wants their hands to feel like their hands.
The bassists you know on records all warm up. They don't talk about it — it's not glamorous and the audience never sees it — but it's the difference between the player who shows up consistent and the player who shows up "having an off night." I used to live with Alex Claffey, one of the working bassists in this city. Alex warmed up religiously — 10 or 15 minutes, every single time he left the house with his bass. He never had off nights. Pino Palladino built his whole technique to be ergonomic enough that his hands would last. The most-copied session bassist alive plays the way he plays because his hands need to keep playing.
Warming up isn't what insecure musicians do. It's what working bassists do.
Bonus nobody mentions: on the days you only have 15 minutes to play, this is your practice session. Both hands. Whole neck. Intervals I don't usually visit. By minute fifteen the chops are maintained and the bass feels like the bass again. So on the days life ate the practice window and there's only 15 minutes between getting home and bedtime — 15 minutes is enough.
And on the subject of hands: I've hurt mine plenty over the years. I used to dig in trying to get a big sound, full-aggression with no warmup, because I was twenty-three and I thought practicing was the whole point. I was wrong. Practicing is the workout. Warmup is the part that lets you do the workout tomorrow. I started teaching this 15-minute routine to my students, and the ones who used it stopped having the physical problems they came to me with. Not because the warmup was magic — because they finally weren't starting with 135 on the bench.
Pick the genre you play most.
For rock players
Most rock lives in E minor, G major, A minor. This routine pulls you out of that pocket. Funky Fifths (#8) opens up keys you don't usually play in. The right-hand exercises (#5–7) build the alternation speed for sixteenth-note riffs. Open Up (#10) handles the times your singer drops the key on Saturday.
I built this for four kinds of bass player. Find yours.
You play 2+ gigs a month. The first tune of every gig has always been the warmup tune, and you know it. Run this in the 15 minutes between sound check and downbeat. The first tune of the set sounds like the fifth.
You practice 3-5 nights a week in the basement, the living room, the spare room. You've been losing the first 10 minutes of every session to cold-finger noodling — same thing every time. Run this instead. The 10 you were losing becomes the 15 you actually use.
You took years off. You're picking the bass back up. Your hands forgot what they used to know. This is the daily routine that rebuilds your chops without the wrist injuries that come from going too hard, too fast.
Your students walk into every lesson cold, and the first 20 minutes of paid time is just getting them warmed up. Hand them this as homework. The lesson starts with their hands already ready, and you get to teach the thing you're being paid to teach.
If you're a working professional already running a daily routine, this might be simpler than what you've got. But most pros download it anyway — for the tour days when nothing else is consistent.
Everything you need to press play.
- Master PDFAll 10 exercises, ready to print and put on your stand.
- Individual PDFs10 separate exercise PDFs for breaking them out.
- Finale files10 .musx files, fully editable. Transpose, slow down, customize.
- Tracks with bass10 backing tracks with me playing. Your guide.
- Tracks without bass10 backing tracks without bass. Your turn.
- Master backing trackAll 10 stitched together. Your daily press-play.
- Lifetime accessNo subscription, no auto-renewal.
- Lifetime updatesWhen I add exercises, you get them.
Cole Davis
Juilliard · Peter Cincotti · NYC working bassist
I went to Juilliard. I did 45 minutes of scales every morning and watched the clock the entire time. Then I graduated, started gigging, and stopped warming up — because every warmup I knew felt like punishment, and I had a band to play with.
For years, the first tune of every gig was my worst tune. The first 10 minutes of every practice was my worst 10. I lived with another working bassist — Alex Claffey — who warmed up religiously, every single time he left the house with his bass, and never had an off night. I noticed.
So I built the warmup I wished existed. 15 minutes. 10 exercises. Same routine I run before every gig with Peter Cincotti — different city, different bass, different amp, every night. If nothing else on tour is consistent, this is.
- Juilliard Artist Diploma
- Peter Cincotti band
- First-call NYC bassist
- Decade of private students
$47 once. Yours forever.
$47one-time · lifetime access
Two coffees a week for a month. Less than a private lesson.
- ✓Master PDF — all 10 exercisesCore
- ✓10 individual exercise PDFsIncluded
- ✓10 editable Finale (.musx) filesIncluded
- ✓10 backing tracks with bassIncluded
- ✓10 backing tracks without bassIncluded
- ✓Master backing track (all 10 stitched)Press-play
- ✓Lifetime access & updatesForever
What changes, and when.
The 30-Day Promise.
Run it daily for thirty days. If the bass doesn't feel easier in your hands and in your body, email me and I'll refund you. No questions, no explanations.
Questions.
The ones that come up most.
If you can hold the bass and produce a tone, and you've been playing more than a few months, you can run this. There are exercises you'll skip at first — that's the design. As you grow into them, the warmup grows with you. Exercise 7 has a "Skip this one if it's too difficult" note printed right on the page.
Hubbard's book is an hour of intense etudes. This is the 15 minutes you do before sitting down to do that. They're complementary, not competing. But if you don't have an hour every day, this is the one that runs every day.
Yes. Exercises 5, 6, and 7 are the right-hand work — adapt easily to pick technique. Everything else is plucking-style agnostic.
You can follow along by ear using the backing track with bass — that's me playing it. The notation helps but isn't required. The Finale files let you slow exercises down or transpose if you need to.
Yes. The exercises are genre-neutral — chromatic, intervals, finger dexterity. The chord vamps are jazz-flavored but the lines work for rock, blues, country, gospel, indie, metal. None of it is style-locked.
The PDFs cover everything you need to play and read. Finale files are optional — they're for the players who want to transpose, slow down, or edit. There's a free Finale reader if you ever want to use them.
Probably not, but possibly. The exercises are pedagogically simple, but I run this exact warmup before every gig with Peter Cincotti. If you have your own daily routine that works for you, keep it. If you don't, this is the one I'd hand a colleague.
30 days, no questions. Email support and we'll send the money back.
15 minutes.
The first tune sounds like
the fifth.
$47
Get The 15 Minute Warmup30-day promise · Lifetime access
P.S.There is no real warmup for bass guitar. There's 45 minutes of scales, there's nothing, or there's a Hubbard book that scares you. This is the first time anyone has built the 15-minute middle path. If you're going to skip it, at least don't skip it because you didn't know it existed.
