Warm Up Routine

Every minute practiced without a metronome is wasted practice!

When is the best time for a warm up?  Let's think about this one.  A great warm up requires patience, time, and a clear mind.  At school or during a time with the hustle and bustle of everyday life these requirements are hard to meet.  Warm up in the morning when you wake up.  You'll be able to do so efficiently, and we all know the first tones of the day aren't usually the best ones, so why would we wait until people can hear bad tone?

A warm up session shouldn't just be for getting the blood flow back in your lips.  No, actually there is already a lot blood, and the main purpose of the first tones of each day is to remember what it's like to play.  You should refresh your memory about how your tone should be, never wavering and changing.  Long tones, like holding a concert B-flat for about 8 counts and then changing to an A-natural for 8 counts, the B-flat to A-flat, and so on, will provide an adequate exercise for listening to each tone.  Never accept blemishes in the tone quality or note fracking of any kind.  The Remington Warm Up studies is a great source for these exercises.

After the long tone exercises, flexibility of the lips should be refreshed.  Start with slower slur patterns such as starting with middle F and slurring up to the B-flat, back to F, to the lower B-flat, and then F again to finish.  Do this with the different various fingerings in a downward pitch procession.  Now you can start on more challenging slurs.  I recomend the Earl F. Irons Flexibility studies.  It is in Treble Clef, but I would get over it or do some homework and see if you can find a Bass Clef version.

Tonguing is an essential part of playing any wind instrument.  In order to tongue, the tip of the tongue must hit the mouth where you it naturally places saying, ta, tu, toe, da, or doe.  Different qualities of sound come out will each various syllable.  I like using the syllables ending with the "O" sound because they give a more round dark sound.  A great exercise for tonguing is to play the rhythm:  [{{ [{{ {{{{ {{{{ on each note going up your scales.  Check what tempo you can keep up with and always push yourself higher.

NOTE VALUE KEY: eigth note = [ sixteenth notes = {

On top of practicing your tonguing with scales, also practice different articulations, finger dexterity (or physical skill), and rhythms.  For articulation practice, do patterns up and down the scales such as "slur two notes, tongue two notes, slur two, tongue two,...." or "tongue two, slur two."  Be creative but constant throughout each exercise.  Finger dexterity can be found in playing certain patterns, like going up the first five notes of each scale and then back down.  The Clarke Technical Studies is a great source for cool "finger busters" as I like to call them.  Rhythms can be practiced by picking out any rhythm, like: {[{ {[{, or {{[ [{{ {{[ [{{, ect. Each pattern can be played on each note of a scale, or the rhythms can provide the actual patter to go up a scale.  Have fun with it.