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Warming Up Dr. Liz Aleksander, UT-Martin

ealeksan@utm.edu • www.utm.edu/clarinet

What is warming up? Warming up is a period of time at the beginning of your playing wherein you focus on one aspect of playing at a time. This allows you to focus on fundamentals and start making any changes you’re working on.

How long does it take to warm up? For younger players, 20 minutes is often sufficient; professional players may take an hour or more to warm up. In the end, this comes down to you: how much time you have available to practice on a given day, how much playing you need to do outside of practicing, if you’re making any fundamental changes, and how much material you need to cover in the remainder of your practice session.

Why should I warm up? Warming up serves several important purposes:

• It gets your body ready to play and prevents injury: by slowly preparing your muscles for more strenuous use, you avoid hurting yourself by going directly from cold to full usage.

• It gets your instrument prepared to play. Our breaths are warm and contain humidity; when not used, a clarinet is cold and dry. This difference can cause cracking if a clarinet is played for a long amount of time without first being warmed up.

• It allows us to practice more efficiently. Reinforcing “the basics” by warming up gives you a more solid foundation of playing on which to build the rest of your practice session.

• It helps us mentally prepare for practicing. When you take time at the beginning of your practice session to warm up, you’re also focusing your mind on playing and blocking out any interferences, including homework, tests, roommates, etc…

What aspects of my playing do I need to warm up? Your warm-up should include at least these three areas, in order:

1. Embouchure and air (tone) 2. Fingers (while slurring) 3. Tongue

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By following this order, you build from one element to the next: nothing can be played without the air and embouchure, then you’re adding fingers to the equation, and you’re finally topping it off with articulation.

How do I warm up my embouchure and air (tone)? To warm up the embouchure and air, we use long tones, which are played slowly. Many people skip long tones because they think they’re boring; however, this is where you can make the most improvement in your tone! Long tones allow you to focus on changes you’re making in your posture, breathing, air, embouchure, and tongue position.

So, if you need to do long tones, how can you prevent them from getting boring? The key here is variety. You don’t need to do the same long tones every day; in fact, you can even make up your own exercises using whole notes.

Another thing to remember is that you need to play in all registers to work on achieving a consistent tone across the entire range of the instrument. Make sure that you play every note on your instrument in your long tones.

Finally, remember that this is your best chance to improve your tone. Strive for your best possible sound. Always. Period.

Here are some of my favorite long tone exercises:

Continue up the scale to your highest note. Make sure you’re using correct fingerings.

Continue up the chromatic scale until you play F-C.

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Continue up the chromatic scale until you’ve played your highest note.

Continue up the chromatic scale until you’ve played your highest note.

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How do I warm up my fingers? This is everyone’s favorite part of the warm-up: scales! We use slurred scales to warm up the fingers and master the technique of our instrument – including those pesky side keys and alternate fingerings!

You should always play your finger warm-ups with a metronome to develop control of your fingers. Prioritize playing accurately at a slow tempo over playing quickly but sloppily.

As you warm up your fingers, you should work toward memorizing all your major scales AND the chromatic scale, over the full range of the instrument and with correct fingerings.

Continue playing through all 12 major scales, as well as the chromatic. Alter the number of octaves as needed to fit your range.

How do I warm up my tongue/articulation? To warm up the tongue, we use articulation exercises, always played with a metronome so that your articulation is controlled and rhythmic.

As you warm up your articulation, make sure to listen to your tone as well: we often change our air when articulating, which makes it harder to articulate clearly and quickly.

Here are some of my favorite articulation warm-ups:

Make sure that your legato and staccato are different lengths. (from Kelly Burke’s great book, Clarinet Warm-Ups: Materials for the Contemporary Clarinetist.)

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This exercise is good for working on endurance; play through several times, making sure to keep the air going and listen for consistent tone throughout. (from Reginald Kell’s 17 Staccato Studies for Clarinet.)

This exercise is good for working on speed; although the rhythm looks horrible, it’s actually just “1+a 2+a 3+a 4+a.” Make sure to keep the air going and listen for consistent tone throughout. (from Gustave Langenus’s The Complete Method for Clarinet, book 3.)