Warming-Up for Brass Players

Hello Everybody!

Today I'd like to write briefly about the most important part of any practice session: the warm-up. All brass players use a certain set of muscles located on different parts of the face, and several others throughout the body. Just as an athlete warms-up before they train, brass players also must warm-up before playing in order to maximize performance and reduce chance of injury.

The two most crucial parts of a brass player's warm-up are long tones and lip slurs

Long tones are simply notes held out for an extended period of time. They may not sound the most exciting, but they work. In addition to warming up your face, you can use long tones to do several things, like:

• Focus on minimizing unnecessary tension in the mouth or throat
• Listen to your pitch to ensure that it is stable
• Pay attention to your posture

Lip slurs are patterns of notes that are played only with the embouchure, without the help of the fingers or tongue. A sample lip slur exercise might be something like this:

Arabic Numerals denote valve combinations
Roman Numerals denote trombone slide position

While lip slurs and long tones are also good exercises for building ability in general, there is one key difference between lip slurs and long tones as a warm up and as an exercise, which is the range. While warming up, brass players should avoid playing these exercises in the extremes of their range, especially the upper extreme. This will actually hurt the player more than help them.

For more information about other ways to warm up, check out this video uploaded by Scott Prescot Brass Warm-Up