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Hello,

As I am sure everyone will agree with, our warm up is an essential aspect of our practice. I am wondering what you do as a daily warm up routine. I use many different lip slurs, scales, tonguing, and long tone exercises. . I am wondering what you do that you believe is essential to your warm up routine: ex. certain types of exercises, etudes, anything.

I am posing this question in search of some ideas to extend my warm up. At times, i just feel there is something I am missing that would help my playing.

Thanks
Ryan

20 Minute Warm Up by Michael Davis. If you can tackle this, you are ready for anything you'll come across in your daily practice.

During the June 2009 Miraphone Personal Development Academy at UNC-Greensboro, Demondrae Thurman did a session on warm up.

My take-away from that session is that warm-up is separate from daily routine. Uneducated amateur that I am, this was a true ah-ha moment (or epiphany if you like more formal nomenclature).

Demondrae's suggested warm up (from my nearly indecipherable notes) includes:
- physical stretching.
- 4 in/4 out and 4 in/8 out breathing away from the horn. About 4 reps of each pattern, mm=56.
- chromatic long tones over one partial, i.e.; whole note F, dotted half note E nat, quarter rest; whole note F, dotted half note E flat, quarter rest; repeat chromatically through valve combinations; then repeat beginning on B flat (4th partial); finish with the same series beginning on B flat (2d partial). N.B. - numbering of the partials may be inaccurate and beginning notes assume Bb instrument. Modify to suit.
- Simple lip slurs (as flow exercises) also beginning on three partials. This is not the time to do lip slurs into your screech register unless you are polishing your chops for performances that require said register.

The whole thing takes about 15 minutes.

For me, this regimen leaves me ready to do what I need (and have time) to do - daily routine, etudes, woodshedding for performance, performance, etc.

YMMV.

I'm going to try these suggestions from Sergeant First Class Scott Cameron, US Army Field Band, which I came across yesterday. The undated document is called "Tuba Clinic."
http://bands.army.mil/masterclass/tusaf ... clinic.pdf" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank

I normally warm up by playing a random note above the staff, usually a middle C, as a long tone. Then I go down an octave at a time for two octaves, then back up again an octave at a time to my start point.

I do that a couple of times, then head down to the basement.

For low long tones, I usually start at C below the staff, then slur down to a second note a half tone lower, and then back up to C. I repeat this, each time dropping the second slurred note another half tone. I continue dropping pitch until I cannot get a note any longer.

Before I warm up with the tuba, I always try to get in some good buzzing to get my lips working. a quick smoke usually also helps my lungs pump more air...go figure
How much, and what I warm up depends on how much I've been playing that day, what instruments I've been playing that day, how my chops are feeling, what feels strong and weak, and how much I played the day before.
I always work from a point of stregnth...if my middle Bb is feeling good, I'll start from there, then do a scale down the octave...if that feels good, I'll keep going another octave (and lately that's where I've been getting a little hung up). I'll then do the scale back up to the middle Bb (in the staff), and go up an octave, octave and a half, or 2 octaves.
By that point, I'll have figured out what feels good and what doesn't, and do some warmups to try to even it out and bring up whatever doesn't feel like it should. I use various lip slurs and long tones, depending on what feels right. My first teacher taught me to be a big fan of the Jacobs exercise in the back of the Rubank's Advanced Band Method Book (specifically, the long tones on scale degrees 1-2-1-7,-1-3-5-7-1').

Thanks for all of the suggestions. Just for more information, I am going to be attending Graduate school this coming year, and am looking for something that may not be so widely used but is helpful. I have a pretty decent warm up, and just wanted to see if maybe there is something i might like to add.

Thanks
Ryan

tubadude08 wrote: As I am sure everyone will agree with, our warm up is an essential aspect of our practice.

Although I would agree that a warmup is an essential aspect of practice, I am quite puzzled by your post. Your profile tells us you joined TubeNet on May 6, 2005. If that is true, you must not regularly read the posts. If you did, you would readily realize that there is nothing, NOTHING, that everyone would agree with. In fact, some will disagree with this post. I am quite sure of this.

That is a good point. Maybe i should clarify and say that many people would agree.

TubaRay wrote:

tubadude08 wrote: As I am sure everyone will agree with, our warm up is an essential aspect of our practice.

Although I would agree that a warmup is an essential aspect of practice, I am quite puzzled by your post. Your profile tells us you joined TubeNet on May 6, 2005. If that is true, you must not regularly read the posts. If you did, you would readily realize that there is nothing, NOTHING, that everyone would agree with. In fact, some will disagree with this post. I am quite sure of this.

Yep. Ray hit the nail on the head. I rarely "warm up" at all and certainly don't consider it an essential aspect of practice. I might even be inclined to say that the lack of a "need" for a warm-up can be an advantage in many situations, but I understand that's a very unpopular attitude.

I do, however, practice flexibility exercises quite a little bit at the beginning of a session. I also often begin with a read-through of one of the Arban Characteristic Studies. I suppose some might consider that a "warm-up."

All that said, I will second the motion for a look at the Michael Davis warm-up methods.They incorporate a wide variety of techniques into a routine that will help you really master the instrument.

http://www.hip-bonemusic.com/warmuphome.htm

bloke wrote:Leave about ten minutes later than the last possible "sane" moment that you know you can leave the house and make the downbeat. Drive 80 mph down 40 mph streets while sucking down a couple of 12 oz. Jolt's. Park two and a half blocks away (over on that seedy street), because the last of the arriving patrons' cars are lined up at the ticket gate at the entrance to the garage waiting to pay to park. Run you butt off to the hall. Zip open the bag, jam the mouthpiece in, and sit down three seconds before the concertmaster (who has already given up on any chance of your arrival) walks out on stage. If you can't play "del forza" with an adrenaline rush and deep breathing like that, you might as well hang it up.

Haha, wow

To be honest, I don't like to warm up. It's more of a "how am I feeling today?" sort of basis, but usually I decide not to. If I do warm up, I usually do some arpeggios starting on the second partial all the way to the 8th partial (ie. C below staff to C above staff), then back down. I'll alternate between going "up" legato or staccato, and same goes for going down. Then I move down a minor 2nd (B) and do it again. I do this all at a very comfortable (approx. 50 bpm) tempo. As I said, I do this when I feel I should warm up.

Joseph

tubadude08 wrote:At times, i just feel there is something I am missing that would help my playing.

Could you be more specific here (ie what exactly you feel is missing, is it the sound, intonation, articulation, or just a simple desire to improve)?

Are you sure that an extended warm up is the solution?

Many of the responses are personal opinions of what works best for the people that posted them. If I had to pick one that seems to fit your request of something different, I'd go with Bloke's.

For my warm up I usually usually start on a middle F at pianissimo, gradually crescendoing to as loud as I can go as play long tone chromatic slurs down into the pedal range. Being asthmatic, doing this lets me know for sure if I will have breathing difficulties as I play that day or not, so I can adjust accordingly. Then I usually go back to F at forte and work my way up to as high as I can play with more long tone chromatics, but decrecendoing, focusing on intonation and control of the sound. From there, I usually just hit the difficult parts of whatever I intend to play that day and I'm good to go.

What I've taken to doing lately is taking a short walk (20 minutes), doing breathign exercises for the first half, then doing glissando and root-5th-root (downward, mainly) mouthpiece buzzing until I return home. Once I start with the horn, I do some long-tone exercises along with some slow, melodic recordings that have virtually immobile bass-lines. This helps me work on my ear training, as well as in-context intonation tweaking. I then do a few scales/arpeggios selected randomly from my home-made flash-card set. After that, it's on to etudes/repertoire for the rest of the day. Also, I carry my mouthpiece everywhere and buzz all day, doing basic exercises to build my endurance, intonation steadiness, and tone quality. Seems to be working for me so far!