Warm Up to Practice
- The Executive Team
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 3 minutes ago
Should you try to save time by jumping into the hardest section of a piece you are practicing? Probably not. Just like for athletes, a short warm-up gets your body and mind ready for a more productive practice session. Here are some suggestions for how to start.
1. Open Strings
Play some open strings with long full bows. Use a good bow hold and move your bow at a right angle to the strings. Focus on creating a full ringing sound. Watch your arm, hand, and bow position, and make sure you are using good technique as you play each open string.
Ask yourself: Is my bow movement smooth? Am I producing a nice ringing sound on each string?
2. Slow Scales
After feeling comfortable producing a good tone with open strings, move on to playing some simple scales. Play slowly – one note per bow. Pay additional attention to your left hand now. Make sure you are pressing down on the strings with good finger technique and shifting smoothly.
If you are a beginner, start with one octave scales. If you are more advanced, play two and three octave scales. Work on producing a steady, clear sound, with clean string crossings and continued good bowing technique.
If you are a more advanced student, add vibrato to your scales as you try to continue producing good tone.
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Ask yourself: Is my pitch accurate? Are my fingers in good position and moving smoothly? Am I still producing a smooth even sound?
3. Bowing Variations and Arpeggios
Once you are comfortably producing beautiful slow scales, add some bowing and rhythm variations. Play two notes per bow (still slowly) and then four notes per bow.
Try speeding up while maintaining good pitch and steady volume. Try playing some arpeggios (which use notes of a chord) to help your fingers practice common patterns.
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A good book like Hrimlay Scale-Studies for violin or Klengel Technical Studies for cello can help provide you with useful scale and arpeggio variations to try (see book covers and links below).
4. Easy Familiar Piece or Current Piece
After you have warmed up with these exercises, you can try playing a familiar piece for additional warm up or beginning playing your current piece. Gradually building up to a more complex piece by going through warm-up exercises can help prepare your body and mind. It can help reduce the formation of bad habits, and improve practice sessions. Happy practicing!