Warming Up Together

             In a perfect world, a rehearsal would fit in everyone’s schedule.  All members would be able to arrive on time and have adequate time to warm-up beforehand.  However, this is not a perfect world.  With trying to accommodate for your own schedule and others in the group, it is inevitable someone will be rushed coming from a class and will not have time to get in a decent warm-up.  In a situation like this, you can either start rehearsing the music with the risk of having one member being cold or blowing their chops early, or take it as an opportunity to play together on a more basic level.  A group warm-up is a great way to establish basic skills needed to apply to more advanced music.

 

            Since there usually is not anything technically challenging in any given warm-up, it yields a greater chance to really focus on the sound coming out of everyone else’s horn.  Just from doing a set of long tones together, quite a lot can be learned about your colleagues’ tuning tendencies or perhaps how you can work to blend in any given register.  Assigning specific notes of a chord to each member is also a way to work on balance and figuring out how to adjust your tuning on any given note of a chord. Situations like this can be useful because it is much harder to focus on the simple things when the notes of a piece are coming at the speed of light!  Even if everyone shows up to a rehearsal warmed up and ready to go, I encourage this sort of start to a rehearsal.