Posted by Bill on June 18, 2001 at 19:37:04:
In Reply to: Warm-Ups posted by Dan Mordhorst on June 18, 2001 at 17:09:51:
I learned to warm-up from an old man who thought warm ups would be overlooked if they were boring. First, before I play the horn, I lip buzz for three minutes or until my lip feels flexible, if that is shorter. Then I spent 3 minutes or unti I get hyperventilated on the Jacobs breathing tools (Brian, thanks X 1,000,000 for showing me these). Having done that, I do what the old man taught me; I play long tones in the guise of beautiful melodies from the American Popular Song Book (not a publication but a form of music). Usually I do things like "Laura," "I'll Get By," "Danny Boy," "Someone to Watch Over Me," "Some Enchanted Evening," "Over the Rainbow," "Brother Can You Spare a Dime," "Impossible," "Bewitched, Bothered, etc.," and others beautiful melodies as they happenin to my head. Then I do some up tempo swingish and jazzy things to make my fingers work and then on to the scales, at least all the majors and 8 minors in all three forms. Then I test to see if I need work on some fundamental and work on it or go on to a piece I need to practice. This all takes about 20 minutes and I do it only on the first studio session every day (I do a minimum of two, three if I can). I can do this warm up without written music ( I do the songs out of my head in whatever key will stretch my range). I don't need a book to do the warm up so it is alwyas available to me. By playing songs with long notes, I get long tones played without complaining about them.
I used to write out these tunes but I have learned how to do them without written music now. You should really concentrate on making the songs very lyric aand very pretty; tone is the point of doing this.
If you havenot listened to this type of music, you must have something you can hear in your head and use. Most pop melodic music, to me, at least, sounds like women, in pain, screaming and men shouting at them but there must be some purely melodic things which will occur to you.
And yes I am a very old man. I have been playing for 53 years, now.