Warming up before you play, or even practice, is incredibly important. How important? Think about these hypothetical scenarios:

1) Say you’ve just been assigned a big group presentation for a class or work. You’ve been busy with other obligations and haven’t been able to devote the appropriate time to your part of the presentation. Thankfully, your group-mates have picked up some of the slack, and have written out your part for you. But to make matters worse, on the morning of your presentation, you sleep in, arrive late and tired, and you end up just reading notes you haven’t had enough time to study.

2) It’s pull-up day in gym class. You may not be the most athletic person, but you’re good at pull-ups. Now is your time to shine! You know you can do twelve pull-ups perfectly. But, you’re running late and you miss your warm-up stretches. When it comes time to do your thing, you can only get to seven, and your arms are sore for days afterwards.

3) You’re auditioning for an ensemble. You were fourth chair in the wind ensemble last year, but you feel confident that you can get to second, or even first chair this year. However, over the summer you didn’t get in as much practice time as you usually do during the rest of the year. When the audition comes, you squeak a few times, mess up a passage you had memorized last week; overall, you bomb it.

Each of these scenarios could be easily avoided by taking the proper time to warm up. That’s why we’ve spent the last few weeks discussing proper warm-up techniques for piano, guitar & bass, and vocalists.

This week we’re turning our attention to clarinet, saxophone, and flute; the woodwind section.

With all the variations of instruments in the woodwind section, and all the different kinds of warm-up techniques available to each and every one of them, it would be impossible to cover all the possibilities. So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at a few general ways you can warm up, as a template to create a warm-up routine of your own!

Long Tones

Long tones are a critical part of warming up a woodwind, and should be a part of your daily warm-up routine. Long tones are great for warming up because they offer a number of important benefits. First and foremost, they literally warm up your instrument. A cold instrument’s intonation will be poor and inconsistent. With consistent, daily practice, long tones are also great for strengthening your embouchure and air support.

It’s best to begin your long tones in the middle register of your woodwind, as these tend to be the easiest to play. Since they’re not physically difficult to play, you can focus your attention on exactly what you’re doing – you might even think of it as a sort of meditation! Remember, warming up is as much about your body and instrument as it is about your mind. If you’re not paying enough attention your instrument will get warm, but you won’t be getting everything you can out of the routine.

Listen for steady intonation and for a steady tone. You want your intonation to be solid and the tone to not waver. If this is hard to do at first, that’s okay, but if you stick with it, it will improve over time.

Technical Exercises

You can think of long tones as sort of stretching exercises for woodwinds. And if that’s the case, then technical exercises are the calisthenics. The idea of warming up is to ease into playing so you can avoid stress, strain, and most importantly, injury.

You’ll want to move from simple to complex when it comes to warm-ups. Begin with long tones, then move on to these technical exercises. When practicing technical exercises, start slow and simple, and gradually move on to faster and more difficult things. This helps with accuracy and success.

So, what are “technical exercises,” anyway? A few examples that you can perform include running through your scales, running through arpeggios, playing chromatic exercises, working on areas of your instrument that you find more challenging, working on tonguing and articulation, etc. Your warm-up routine should cater to your specific needs and goals as a musician. You can ask your teacher to help plan out a warm-up routine that will help you reach your personal goals.

Using scales and arpeggios to warm up will help you with your finger technique, but it’s also important to keep in mind the same principles from practicing the long tones. Specifically, you’ll want a constant, consistent, and stead stream of air, while also paying special attention to your air flow and speed, throat position, and intonation. Try it out with major scales, chromatics, and arpeggios. Try any scales you’re working on, or that will be good for the particular situation you’re warming up for.

In Conclusion

Making sure to warm-up is an essential component of any kind of performance art. In the end, it’s just as much about warming up your body and instrument as it is about preparing yourself mentally. It’s about focusing on the task at hand.

To a beginner, warming up could seem like a waste of time – it can be boring, repetitive, and downright uninspiring. It can seem unnecessary, and you might feel like just skipping it to get to the more entertaining stuff. If you decide to do this once in a while, it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s important to keep in mind that warming up is in your best interest. And not warming up can make you have a less-than-fantastic performance – or even leave you with a hand or jaw injury! It may seem like a waste of time to go through the routine of warming up, but it actually ends up saving time.

Every musician should warm up before a performance or long practice session. Woodwind warm-ups are an essential part of playing a woodwind instrument!