Author: brycon
Date: 2022-08-16 00:19
Quote:
I'm interested in your views about warmup routines - the time spent doing long tones and scale and tonguing exercises before turning to whatever happens to be on your stand.
I think that for the most part, time would be much better spent elsewhere than on lengthy warmups.
My own warmup lasts about 20 to 30 mins and includes a bit of stretching, improvisation, and a single very slow scale or arpeggio, that is, it gets my body, ears, and mind in gear for practicing while allowing for the instrument itself to get up to temperature.
A few points to toss out:
1. Long tones, scales, etc. should be things you actually practice, not things you prosaically play through before getting to "the real stuff."
2. Indeed, all those warmup-like exercises require expressivity. For the tongue to work, for instance, the air needs to be active and moving somewhere. Many players, however, focus entirely on the technical aspects of playing ("The tip of my tongue has to hit exactly on this spot at the tip of the reed...") during their warmup while ignoring the expressive side. The warmup, then, gets them further from their playing goals by reinforcing bad habits, that is, playing in an entirely non-expressive manner.
3. Players tend to stick with material for far too long. There's a lot of stuff out there on learning plateaus and how to get off of them. Making minor improvements, often so small they're beyond the threshold of perception, rather than tackling new difficulties isn't going to make you much better at clarinet. How many players fuss over getting an exact tone color ("I want to have that ping that Harold Wright got!") and doing lengthy longtone exercises while their finger facility remains rather bad? Seems to make more sense to focus on what you're bad at rather than mindlessly sticking with some warmup routine (which, moreover, you probably didn't even devise yourself but was given to you by some player who undoubtedly has different issues with his or her playing than you do).
4. For those players who swear by lengthy warmup routines, I wonder how much improvement they'd see (or how much worse they'd become) if they ditched the routine and replaced it with a similar length of a. singing, b. piano playing, c. ear-training exercises, and d. actively listening to music. I bet for most people, the warmup is a psychological crutch, "I've got to get through this stuff in order to really play clarinet," rather than something leading to real and substantial growth as a clarinetist and musician.
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