A personal thing – focus on tone, which indicates how well you’re playing
Ensemble can work on group tuning, balance, blend
Both: relaxation
Negative: boring because it’s repetitive
Value of warmup:
- Focus mentally & prepare the body
- Calm nerves
- Prevent injury – raise muscle temperature – 5-minute minimum to do this
- Increase endurance
- Warm horn up into pitch (low brass tend not to do this)
Value of routine:
- Remember how to play – start from scratch every day, stay on the straight and narrow path, check your compass heading
- Review the basics to be certain they are correct
- Increase consistency and improve skills
- No uncertainty of what to do or how to sound; leads you into correct playing
- Efficient use of time – don’t have to think about what to do
- Mentally calming
Procedure
- Should warm up each time you play, but not as much for the first time of day (sleep does something)
- Should be memorized ASAP so player can focus on listening; don’t need to find music to warm up
- Rest 50% of the time – study music during the rests
- Length – 5 minute minimum to warm up the muscle temperature
10 – 15 minutes recommended – 1:1 play:rest ratio
Easily as much as 20-45 minutes – CSO, but that’s really practice; but if you think you need it, you need it
Warm Down – restore response; a warm up in reverse order; helps minimize bad following days
Attitude – trumpet is the best, fearless: conductor, high, fast soft, etc.
Posture – tall as you can: breathe, good looks, keep brain sharp
Breathing – Warm up the breathing muscle- 3 large breaths in a row = dizzy
Leak and Seal – set proper embouchure position; sound of air pressure, as easy as possible, corners in correct position and their reaction to air
Buzz –
- Sirens – warm up muscles and coordinate protractors and retractors; may need to start small
- Songs – coordinate ear and lips; include tonguing and slurring (ww’s can play in hard keys)
![](http://www.hsutrumpets.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Siren.png)
Long tones tend to numb the mind, but lyrical studies emphasize interpretation, phrasing, dynamic, nuance, etc.
(Horn and trombone players often start up with lip slurs) – start with bigger intervals right away; but, the trombone has to tongue if they don’t lip slur
Tone Studies – Listen to recordings;
fine tune the muscles by the sound in your head;
Leyva – experience things vicariously – must listen to know what to sound like
Moving long tones – short, slow, simple melodies moving in 2nds or 3rds; medium range; medium volume, slow enough to allow player to hear tone quality
Three goals:
- Great attack (release) – Oh, tu
- Great tone
- Smooth connection – listen to the sound between notes (the slur); fast valves; glide across the ice
Catch yourself doing something right; rock with the hole in it – late and early bloomers
Layoff – a chance to come back as you should have played, not as you used to play
Range expansion – 10% maximum of total practice p.27
Continuation/Melding into Practice Routine
- Flow studies – HO p.16, BE21,22,26 – tonguing only 1st note after the breath
Faster than moving long tones, wider range, bigger internals. No change in sound production e.g. Clarke Technical Studies BC. P. 26
- Simple
Melodies etudes
Getchell Practical Studies, Concone, Bordogni, - Lip slurs
Two notes back and forth – adjacent overtones
Skip overtones – Dirty Dozen
- Tonguing –
Single – keep notes very long at first, then move to staccato
Double and triple
Good time to work on scales to accomplish two things at once
Warmup Materials
Arban – trumpet – Complete Conservatory Method
Schlossberg – trumpet – Daily Drills and Technical Studies
Little – horn – Embouchure Builder
Remington – trombone – warmup studies – BC p.24