Two Ways to Warm-up, and a Great Quote from John Barrows

Today in our horn pedagogy class the topic was the warm-up. One aspect of this that is little commented upon is there are essentially two ways to warm-up.

For years and years I followed a basically set routine of approximately twenty minutes, primarily one based on materials in the Farkas book with an extended pre-warm-up in the mid and lower register. This set routine was for me viewed as being the start of any playing session, be it a practice session, rehearsal, or concert. As a student and professional player I found this worked great, as there was a certain comfort to knowing always that if I started the routine cold I would feel totally ready to go at the end. For me personally I did eventually work out a couple of shorter routines to use in situations where I needed only to re-warm-up, and also branched out eventually so that each part of the routine was a “slot” that I could drop one of several, similar exercises into.

The other approach is that of the longer early morning warm-up. This type of warm-up typically lasts toward an hour. If you follow this approach, later in the day you would only normally warm-up briefly before any other playing session. When I started working on The Brass Gym by Sam Pilafian and Patrick Sheridan this was a big switch in my warm-up method, as it is a long warm-up. For the playing I have been doing these past few years, teaching full time, The Brass Gym sets my chops up much better for a day of playing off and on than did the shorter warm-up I used to use. Any morning that I have the opportunity (more than twenty minutes) I do The Brass Gym up through “Beautiful Sounds” and continue with a variety of technical materials for up to an hour.

Of course there is actually a third approach, that of the very, very short warm-up. There is a story quoted in the website of San Fransico Symphony hornist Robert Ward that was told by former Minnesota Orchestra principal hornist Kendall Betts in relation to the warm-up he observed of the legendary hornist and teacher John Barrows. For those not familiar, Barrows is best remembered as the hornist that Wilder wrote the sonatas and other works for; a busy freelance player in New York, he later taught full time at Wisconsin and at the end of his career at Arizona State.

In the summer of 1969 I was participating in the Marlboro Festival and we were rehearsing the Beethoven 7th from 9 to 12 AM with Pablo Casals. John Barrows was playing 1st and I was on 2nd. I had arrived at 8 and warmed up for an hour. John showed up about 8:50, walked to his chair, belched out a middle C, put his horn down on the chair and went to have coffee. He returned at the oboe’s A and proceeded to play the 1st horn part brilliantly without an assistant. I was struggling to keep up on 2nd at that awful hour of the day. At the break I asked, “John, do you warm up at home?” He replied, “No, Kenny, and let me tell you something, kid. I used to warm up. I warmed up every day for years and years. One day I was warmed up!”

While that is a great story and undoubtedly factual, on the whole, the no warm-up plan is not a great plan to emulate. For me personally to only warm up a few minutes before a rehearsal cuts my endurance way down and feels afterwards like someone punched me in the face. Make your warm-up a priority; it will pay off in better horn playing.