Warming Up

This is as good a place to start as any. What is a warm-up? There are many things we can emphasize when characterizing this essential thing we do. It prepares us for our day of playing, it gets blood to our muscles, it connects the physical element of playing with the mental, it allows us to focus on the most basic elements of playing on a daily basis.

It is the last one that I like to emphasize. The warm-up gives us an opportunity to revisit the things that are most important to playing the trumpet every day. I divide them in three:

• Breathing
• Sound Concept
• Body Awareness

Breath is the most basic element of playing a wind instrument. You might say it was elemental. There is much to say about developing good breathing but what I like to start with is ensuring that you breath with an open mouth (drop your jaw as if you are saying OH). Think of a good breath as sinilar to yawning. You should feel as if the air fills from your belly to your shoulders. There is ore to say about breathing, of course, and we can save that for another post of its own.

Sound Concept is simply thinking about producing a beautiful sound when you are playing. It is important to be able to imagine a beautiful sound and that is developed through listening to all sorts of good musicians.

Body Awareness is mostly about remembering to stay relaxed. The embouchure should vibrate freely, our shoulders should be low and comfortable and our posture should be upright.

In order to focus sufficiently on these basic elements the exercises we use for our warm-up must be simple and familiar. Here are a few good examples of warm-up material. I really like Pierre Thibauld’s characterization of these as vocalise.

• Chicowicz
• Stamp
• Plog
• Verzari
• Johnson
• Thibaud

Look for exercies that suit you.

The three elements are intimately connected and it is hard sometimes to tell which is more important than the other. Breathing is effected by our body’s state of relaxation and a good breath can bring the body to a state of relaxation. Being relaxed has a profound effect on the quality of sound we produce and having a strong concept of a relaxed sound can help us play more correctly.