We all know warming up can be boring. But it’s so important. Even though there’s plenty to get through, we can make it a little fun. In this video, I’m going to show you some tips that you can use to get a little more enjoyment out of your warmup time. But of course, I want to hear your ideas, too, so please leave them in the comments below! As usual, I’m going to embed the video, but if you prefer to read it, just head under the video and take a look at the abridged script.
Abridged Script:
Warming up is so important as a cellist, or really any kind of musician, for that matter. But let’s face it, it can get pretty boring sometimes. I’ll admit that, for a lot of my 20’s, I acted like the effort of warming up wasn’t worth it. I would just jump into repertoire at the beginning of the day. But once I got myself back into a routine at 27, I noticed a huge difference in my playing for the better. So I committed to warming up seriously before diving into repertoire every day, and I absolutely recommend that you do the same, but sometimes, I like to try to have fun with it. In this video, I’m going to give you six tips to spice up your warmups. Some of them I’ve been doing instinctually for awhile, and some of them I thought up for this video. So let’s dive in and see how we can mess around a little bit, while still being productive.
Tip #1: Sing the overtones. Long tones are a great way to get started each day after tuning up. They let you find the sound of the cello, and just practice slow bow control, resonance, and general tone production. As you play, sing the harmonic series above it, skipping the octave, if you like.
Tip #2: Harmonizing. Speaking of singing, harmonize with yourself. Especially when you’re doing scales, this can be a lot of fun. I didn’t ever really think of doing it. I just noticed I was out of instinct from time to time, when I got bored. It adds a layer of richness, and gives you some even more fine-grained intonation practice if you do it right.
#3: From The Top. You don’t have to start every scale from the bottom. Try it from the top sometimes, and then go back up. It’s not only a way to just switch things up a little bit, but it’s a good opportunity to practice hitting that high note, right where it belongs, from thin air. You may want to try one from the bottom, one from the top, and then alternate like that. You still get all the notes in, you just get to be a little spicier about it.
Tip #4: Scale Order. Speaking of scales, you don’t have to do them in order, and same goes for arpeggios. We have 12 major and minor keys we can exercise ,and there’s no reason why they have to follow each other in any particular way. I coded up a little tool that you can use to get a random scale order. Once I tested and debugged, it was ready to go, and it’s now live at celloben.com/shuffle. I tip my hat to the Stack Overflow commenter here, who got me going in the right direction.
Tip #5: Double Stops. Throw some double stops into your scales when it feels good in the hand. I do this during my scale routine sometimes, and much like the singing, it’s just something that organically happened. I do this with thirds and sixths, keeping it within the key I’m playing, when the opportunity to do them conveniently presents itself.
And tip #6: The Johann Shuffle. Another fun thing to do is, if you’ve learned all the Bach Suites, play a random movement. And yes, I coded another tool for that. It’s how I have fun! in case you’ve learned the Fifth Suite in the retuned version, it’s probably not great to tune down just to play a random movement during a warmup. So I’ve made sure to include the option to exclude it. You can find that at celloben.com/randombach. And of course, if you haven’t learned all the Suites, just keep hitting the button until you get to a Suite you have learned. Today, when I used it, it gave me the Bourées from the Third Suite, so I’ll go ahead and do those.
