Warming Up as an Essential Part of Trumpet Playing

Many of us look for a million dollar tip about how to improve our mastership. When it comes to the trumpeters, one of the frequently asked questions is what kind of warm up a musician should do before coming on the stage. First of all, you should understand, that there are no bad or good warm ups as well as there’s no the only true warm up which would be good for everyone, because it’s a very individual thing. You choose what feels right to you. You might be surprised, but many famous musicians use a very brief physical warm ups. They pay more attention to the mental warm ups instead. Let’s investigate this topic in more detail.

There are two types of warm ups: physical and mental.

Physical warm up.

During this activity, you prepare your body for the performance. Your objective is to let your muscles work. In this case, stretching or a little jog would be quite good, especially if you’ve been sleeping or staying in a seated position for a while. We also recommend you to take your instrument and blow a few notes. In such a way, you bring blood to your lips, improve lips circulation and check whether your trumpet is ok. You’d like to reduce the risk of facing the problem after walking out on the stage, right? Blowing a few notes will help to make sure there’s no blockage in the instrument and valves work properly.

It doesn’t mean that the longer the warm up is the more advantages you get, however. Sometimes it’s better to save your time and strength and spend only 5-10 minutes on warm up instead of half an hour and more. According to James Morrison, long warm up demands more energy and that’s actually that energy you could put into your performance on the stage. That’s why such a long preparation could turn into a waste of the energy you need for a good concert. There’s no reason in doing longer warm ups than you need and that’s why a musician should pay more attention to the mental warm up.

Mental warm up.

Mental warm up is the process of getting prepared for playing a concert at the mental level. It’s not enough just to take the instrument out of the case and start playing. You know, lots of things happen during a performance unconsciously. Those are things that lie beyond your own control.  Start your mental warm up with the right thinking. Become aware of what will happen the next hours, grasp the fact that you’re coming on the stage, feel the energy around your body. Take deep breaths, try to imagine and feel the sound of your trumpet before you take a note. You should imagine a picture of how you’re standing on the stage. This simple trick will help you to be more aware of what will happen. The imagination will send a proper signal to your body and you’ll be ready for playing a gig.

Photo by @npmanosca on Instagram.