What Does a Warm-up Look Like?

For a lot of horn players it looks something like the Farkas warm-up. But it is interesting; you can see that some writers of horn methods had very different approaches ranging from the really short and basic long tone routine to the ultimate “captain warm-up” type extreme routine. And of course a part of that is the philosophical question, when does warm-up end and practice begin? The long routine is for sure in large part practice but valuable on some level toward feeling warmed up and ready to go.

With starting to get back in shape after a break this summer I have had a very interesting time doing The Buzzing Book by James Thompson, which is a fairly new publication (2001) for “Trumpet or other brass instruments” in treble clef in Bb or C. This is why I had not taken much note of it, as it is not a horn book. But then I saw early in the summer the post from Derek Wright that he was using it and it was making a difference for him on horn.

So, I ordered a copy which took seemingly forever to arrive actually as the seller that shipped it from Amazon used media mail (a pet peeve of mine: I do not ship media mail with Horn Notes Edition). Anyway, it finally arrived and the basic setup of the routine is that you buzz everything before playing the same thing. I have long liked to use buzzing to set up the embouchure at the beginning of my routine and then later again to setup the approach to the high range so this routine is kind of an extended version of that tactic.

It is a tactic I believe I first picked up years ago as a student from reading the William C. Robinson An Illustrated Advanced Method for French Horn Playing. His concern is “establishing the embouchure” as you start playing and I like that angle on this topic a lot. My general observation is that buzzing is a great way to analyze the general mechanics of what you are doing without getting all caught up in trying to make the corners do this or that, etc. If you can buzz well, free and with a mouthpiece, your setup is in fact correct.

One warning, or at least note: you don’t want your warm-up routine to be so predictable and comfortable that it becomes something you can do totally on autopilot reading a magazine or watching TV. This is why I have suggested to students to think in general of warming up within a framework but always be looking for new materials that fit in that framework. Exercises can be combined to make a wide variety of workable warm-up routines. There is no magic routine. Always feel free to substitute different exercises into your basic warm-up framework to focus on your individual technical problems. Before a rehearsal, in front of others, you should play materials that are basically perfected, but always be working on something new in your private warm-up time.

Back to The Buzzing Book, I am doing it as written in F without either of the CDs that are enclosed. I like where the routine sits in F pretty well, but Derek in his post states that he uses “the CD for Trumpet in Bb and then transpose all of the exercises in the book to Bb basso.” Instead of the CD I have just been using drone pitches generated by my tuner to keep my buzzing right on pitch.

It is a very interesting book and worth checking out. And, if you don’t know the Robinson book, check it out too, actually there are several very similar exercises and concepts presented in the Robinson that you may find easier to apply as no translation is required from trumpet to horn as in The Buzzing Book. The Robinson is available from Wind Music. Also check out the James Thompson website for his page on The Buzzing Book, which has a nice FAQ on the use of this publication.