Making progress

[john4860]

Like a lot of players I had a warm-up routine of playing certain exercises: Irons, Schlossberg, Clarke, etc... and I was getting better at playing them, so I would play them for a half hour (resting between exercises) and then I would rest 15 minutes or so then attempt to play Arbans, etc... however, usually I would have a hard time getting through a few exercises without being worn out (missing notes, not being able to finish a phrase etc.)

About a month ago I didn't get home until around 9 pm and didn't have time for an extensive warm up so I played a few scales and went straight to playing music. Because lets face it, no one wants to play hours of warm up material: long tones, lip slurs etc... we'd all rather be playing music. Plus, if you want to justify playing the trumpet it would be nice to memorize some actual songs and be able to play those on a moments notice.

"Hey, you play the trumpet?" "Play something for me please, I'd love to hear it!" Well, I'm working on this scale exercise do you want to hear that?

Unless there is a discernable melody you are not playing music. If you want to show how high you can play the only person who's going to be impressed is another trumpet player.

So, that night after playing for less than 3 minutes I went directly to Arbans Art of Phrasing and found I could play those pieces without being worn out.

Since then, I've been playing a very short warm up then right into the music and in between songs I've been playing the Arban's lips slurs, found I'm better at all articulation and can get around the horn much better now. I haven't stopped playing Irons etc... just don't play those types of exercises first. I feel like I'm actually making progress.

I think that you absolutely have to play the Irons type things first but that after you get better at them you may benefit from more articulation and different intervals etc... the stuff that music is made of so that you are actually getting better at the end goal which is to be able to play something that sounds beautiful.

FWIW,
John

[cheiden]

I had struggled with a practice mindset that with limited time that I should make sure that my routine was mostly what I considered hard on the chops. What I ended up doing was teaching myself how to really reliably tire myself out really fast. The solution I'm trying to employ to address this is to make sure I do plenty of exercises that don't stress the chops. This means not making every exercise about range extension and not leaping to the hardest etude in the book.
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[Dayton]

[dladore]

I recently saw an interview with Chad Winkler (Pittsburgh Symphony), and he was pretty adamant about keeping warm up to 10 minutes, then go into your fundamentals. Made sense to me.

[kehaulani]

When I played as a music-major student then as a professional, I started off by playing a full range of ascending arpeggios, some rudimentary tonguing exercises and then went right into an exercise regime (or a performance).

But I think part of this subject is semantics. Some people regard a warm-up as preparing them to move into some fundamentals practice and some consider warm-up as being prepared, after it, to be fully prepared for anything.

I don't know if I adequately explained this but I mean one contains more playing and exercises than the other. In many cases, initial playing in a day contains similar exercises. It that the semantic dividing line is different.
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[OldHorn]

Don't overthink this. If your goal is a practice session, then practice. If you have gig to play, then do a warm up so your muscles are ready to play.