TromboneChat

Do you do a full comprehensive warmup, just a short warmup, or no warmup at all. I personally find that I don't really need much of a warmup so I just do a few minutes of glissandos. Also, as someone who struggles, with practice motivation, I find it difficult to get started when I know that I'm just going to be doing boring excersizes for the first 40 minutes. I prefer to jump straight into the rep and work on fundementals later on.

When I was a very active player, meaning the horn was being played at rehearsals and gigs several hours a day, warmup for practice was not really needed.

However, there's something to be said for a short warmup that sets you up for a practice session.
40 minutes is way too long, IMO.
I do some long tones, some lip slurs and a short series of tonguing (quarters, eights sixteenths, etc down the scale).
Then it's off to the practice session. While I am doing this my head is planning what to practice.
The whole thing takes well under 5 minutes

If I do not warm up, the practice session is of lower quality.

btw, I do the same warmup prior to rehearsals and gigs.

On days where there is enought time I generally do about a 2 hour "warmup" most of which is maintenacne and technique work. But it suits the chops I need to do recitals and chamber music concerts, which make up the bulk of my work. For the boring parts I usually just look at websites like this fine forum.

I've found if the room is a little warmer, and thus the horn, I need a little less time to warm up.
This may just be me.

WilliamLang wrote: ↑Mon Feb 01, 2021 7:40 am On days where there is enought time I generally do about a 2 hour "warmup" most of which is maintenacne and technique work.

Wow, I'm curious how you keep motivated to do a 2 hours warm-up. Any tips/tricks to make this interesting enough to do this 2 hours long?

I always warmup, even if it's for only 5 minutes. It's some combination of long tones, lip slurs, and scales (various articulations).

Back when gigs existed I would make sure that I got a 10-30 minute warmup in at some point in the day, and then just blow a few notes when I got to the gig. I play pretty aggressively (on gigs) and always need a decent warmup to not blow my chops out pretty quickly.

Like some others have said there's difference between the warm-up you need, and the one that is optimal for checking in on fundamentals. Warm-up vs. maintenance. 10 - 15 minutes is usually enough for me before a morning rehearsal when the orchestra is working regularly, but I have 45 minutes to an hour of stuff that I like to do when there's time and when work is slow (like now). If I'm working, I can find some time for additional fundamentals during the day, but it is kind of nice to start the day with a deep dive into all of the stuff that you need to do on your horn on a regular basis.

Jim Scott

My two cents: I like to differentiate between a warm-up and a routine. When I’m in shape and practicing every day, it looks something like this:

In a warm-up, I get the body (air and embouchure) and the brain/ears “warmed up” and ready to play music. My focus during this warm-up is on producing a good/great sound and reminding myself what needs to be done physically to produce that good/great sound. This usually lasts about 15-20 minutes, which includes a brief meditation (2-3 minutes), and then breathing and stretching exercises for 5-10 minutes like yoga or The Breathing Gym or David Vining’s books (longer on days when my joints hurt). Then I use the mouthpiece for 1-2 minutes. Only then do I put the mouthpiece in the horn and do glissandos, slow slurs w/scales or arpeggios, some brief long tones or tonguing, and some flexibilities. (I use exercises like you might find in Remington, Vernon, Marstellar, Schlossberg, George Curran, etc.) I try to briefly cover the useable range of the horn, making certain that I don’t play too loudly or tax myself.

After that I’ll rest for 5-10 minutes, then do a routine that works more extensively on scales, long tones, tonguing, range, and other fundamentals (the same books mentioned above). Then it’s on to literature.

I purposely avoid too many long-tone or tonguing exercises too early in the day because I’ve found that they can be quite taxing if not done properly.

90% of the time my warm up us fairly short, glissed long tones in the first 5 -6 partials. Then lip slurs and a few articulation exercises, takes about 10 minutes all focus is on sound and air and ease of playing.

10% of the time I practice just being able to play an excerpt or solo without any warm up. That is just to practice playing in a worse case scenario.

My Maintenance Routine/Technique Advancement sessions are a few hours. They include Etudes, Technique Studies, Exercises, Excerpts, Solos, Quartets, or New Studies. (So basically the practicing sessions). The balance just changes depending on what I need to be playing in the new, mid, and far futures. I try to play only about 45min - hour with at least a 15 minute break between sessions.

@beeethoven it's not so much keeping it interesting as it is doing the job. i don't really think musically until i approach repertoire, and my warm up and maintance is really more akin to a sports idea of practicing for a game (or performance in our case)

i also look at it likes it's eating or breathing - just something that has to get done eventually during the day. personally it doesn't kill my love of music, which helps.

...

My last regular teacher got me going on a routine that I do 95% the same almost every day I play. Even if I do no other playing on a given day, I'll do this routine, to maintain my relationship with the horn.

I guess you could say it's a progressive warm-up that starts easy, gets harder, and gradually touches most fundamentals. It takes me around an hour to get through it, assuming I am careful and go over any rough spots multiple times, slower if needed, to work out the kinks.

I had never been a big believer of this in the past but after doing this a few years I like the way having a true daily routine reliably sets me up at a baseline level with the horn, and I feel like over time it has helped my body internalize playing the instrument in a technically correct way. Then I can carry that into my etudes or rep or gig material or whatever, and all of it is much easier than it used to be in the past when I was quite haphazard about warm-up/maintenance and just wanted to play "real" music all the time.

It depends on the situation. If it is a gig then I might do as much as I can without doing to much. In this case I like to start at home if possible and might play 30 - 40 minutes. Then I go to the gig and there it is very rare I can do much warmup. Another five minutes is a long warmup. Thirty seconds is a short warmup. I might play that warmup in a practice mute.

If I warmup before practice then I do factitious notes at the moment maybe 30 seconds and after this I play a soft mellow song in all keys that contain a lot of slurs and long tones and that could be 10 minutes. After this I might take a short break and continue with other things.

In all I consider my warmup need to be 30 seconds up to to five minutes. Another five minutes or more is when warmup merge into what I consider as regular practice routines.

/Tom

Starting gently, warmup morphs into practice pretty quickly.

I think we need to define "warmup".

To me warmup is a state where I limit my playing in some sense to material that only has as a goal to prepare to play anything. Anything in this case can be defined as "your high range" is in order as well as "your low range" is in order, your tounge is in order, your arpeggios is in order, your dynamics is in order, your articulations is in order.
"In order" can be defined as "your average level" of any of these.

There is still things I would wait to do after 30 seconds
I would not play my squeak register immediately after 30 seconds of warmup, but I would play up to high C (octava) After yet another 5 minutes of practice or warmup I should be ready to go stepwise as high as high F.

Practice continues as soon as the limitations of "no warmup" are gone.

/Tom

The "warm-up" portion of your practice should be like five minutes. Some low lip slurs and glisses to make sure your chops feel good and to remember what the embouchure/compression feels like, and to establish your pitch center. People like to call daily maintenance "warm ups", but it's practice. If you are doing lip slurs for 40 minutes, or articulation exercises, or whatever you do that doesn't sound like a melody but improves your coordination or technique -- that's still you practicing. There is everything right with actively working on gluing notes together a little better than yesterday, but none of that stuff is warming up.

Is warm up what is going on before the first cup of coffee? Then I have to say my warm up is never more than 5 minutes. Sometimes 1 minute. But serious, what is warm up and what is the maintenance, daily exercises?

Leif

JCBone wrote: ↑Mon Feb 01, 2021 6:03 am I find it difficult to get started when I know that I'm just going to be doing boring excersizes for the first 40 minutes.

I'm not a serious trombone player but I've had serious trombone players for teachers and... they never had me on a 40 minute warm up.

I certainly had 40+ minutes of boring exercises to do but I think they were intended as skill builders, not warmups.

It would not surprise me that some dedicated artists assert their marathon warm-up is the secret of their success. I'm reminded of a 19th Century piano virtuoso who practiced scales for two hours every day and then he practiced them for another two hours... with emotion!

robcat2075 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 4:50 pm

JCBone wrote: ↑Mon Feb 01, 2021 6:03 am I find it difficult to get started when I know that I'm just going to be doing boring excersizes for the first 40 minutes.

I'm not a serious trombone player but I've had serious trombone players for teachers and... they never had me on a 40 minute warm up.

I certainly had 40+ minutes of boring exercises to do but I think they were intended as skill builders, not warmups.

It would not surprise me that some dedicated artists assert their marathon warm-up is the secret of their success. I'm reminded of a 19th Century piano virtuoso who practiced scales for two hours every day and then he practiced them for another two hours... with emotion!

Like this, skipping some notes in each scale:



"We're going to go now."

Or:



"I am finished. Thank you."

harrisonreed wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 8:57 pm
Like this, skipping some notes in each scale:

I bet they are warmed up!

I'd say anything over a 15-20 minute warm up becomes a practice session.