🔥 The first ten minutes — how do you warm up?
Before the real work starts, there is that first stretch at the instrument, and everyone treats it differently. Some run scales and slurs like clockwork, some noodle until the hands wake up, some go straight into a piece and warm up on the music itself.
💬 What do the opening minutes look like for you?
- Do you have a fixed warm-up routine, or does it change with the day and what you are working on?
- Is warming up mostly physical for you, mental, or both, and has that understanding changed over the years?
- Has skipping it ever cost you, or do you find you do not really need it?
How we start a session quietly shapes everything that follows. Let's compare the routines that get our hands and heads ready to play.
4 replies
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I pick up my guitar multiple times everyday, I only warm up the first time. I usually check my nails, do a bit of sandpaper polishing, listen to my tone and check my tuning. I usually do an easy scale using different right hand finger combinations. I do a fretboard walking exercise.
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I start out by slowly playing on each fret on the low E, and then the rest of the strings.. I play the fretted string and the one below it to make sure my LH fingers are only on the targeted strings alternating i-m and m-a. I then play an exercise I learned from Matthew McAllister which is a C scale in the first position playing each note 4 times for the whole scale, then 3x, 2x, and 1x alternating fingers. I then play a piece slowly (e.g Aguado Estudio in Am, or Savio Lullaby) to get everything working together, and then I feel ready to go.
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My first ten minutes are used to figure out what is feeling good today and what is not.
Starting very slowly and with very little force, in either hand, I play a few notes to check coordination and how the strings feel under fingers. Then concentrate on making a nice tone and move on to chords - with and without planting - then simple arpeggios. If all is going well I make play a bit of simple Bach very slowly to get everything working together.
The intention is to know if there are things I need to ‘brush up’ on today before I start serious work on repertoire or technical exercises. The more intense work only starts once I am happy all is good and am then ready to be faster, louder and stretch more.
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I have a fixed warm-up routine. It starts with 4 minutes of gentle stretches (I think there are 10 different stretches done here, some are repeated). I will then do some right hand movements on the guitar while playing an open C chord, followed by a couple of scales and an arpeggio pattern all done slowly. I changed the scales and arpeggio patterns everyday from a list of all of the basic ones I have learned so far. From there I will begin to do my technical exercises, which vary depending on what the program I am following has me working on.
I would say that my warm-up is a physical exercise. Just knowing that I am going to practice still awakens the mental aspect, so that does not seem to be an issue. I will also schedule in some "days off" from practicing each month, so that helps to keep a healthy attitude towards practice.
Do I need to do all of this to warm-up? Who knows! I just know that it works for me.