Stretching is not only important for playing an instrument but it can also help to improve a lot of aspects of your life, including your posture. Stretches that help to strengthen your forearms and wrists are also incredibly helpful since the instrument is held up solely by your right thumb. This is why the stretches that primarily focus on your back and arms are the most beneficial to your performance.
Door frame stretches are some of the easiest for helping to improve posture which is necessary to get proper airflow through the clarinet. This will improve your intonation and sound quality while also helping you to increase your range. Just lean far enough to feel the stretch being careful not too lean too far as if you do you can strain your muscles. This warm up focuses on the shoulders and will help to improve posture similar to the door frame stretches.
Hold your arms out horizontally and then slowly move them in circles, getting larger and larger with each circle. Using your other hand, bend your hand back until you feel the stretch in your wrist and forearm and hold the stretch for a few seconds. Practicing these breathing exercises can also improve intonation, sound quality, and dynamic range all adding to make you a better clarinet player. The first breathing exercise is an easy one that you may even do as a group during ensemble practices.
Most instrumentalists dread long tones but they are a great way to improve intonation in general as well as get warmed up. Turn on the metronome to a slow setting and play each note for about eight to ten beats. Practicing your scales is another great way to improve your clarinet playing and warm up the instrument at the same time. Another very important aspect of your warm up should be tonguing exercises which are needed to help you pick up speed with accuracy. Pick a note and set a medium tempo on your metronome, say around 60 BPM for beginners, and as you progress you can increase the speed.
Then, try to play a measure of sixteenth notes at that tempo and slowly increase the tempo until you can barely hit the last note on time. To keep it fresh you can mix it up by doing this exercise with different articulation like legato or staccato. You should see improvement over time that allows you to be able to hit quicker tempos on this exercise.
Playing around with the chromatic scale is another good way to warm up your instrument as it means that you play every single note on the clarinet. This helps to break in the reed. Another great exercise specifically for the clarinet is doing register slurs.
Register slurs will help you feel how your throat position needs to shift between the low and high registers. You want to start off on a low to middle register note. Begin quietly and then crescendo. Register slurs will help you gauge throat position. You also want to listen very closely to your intonation.
If long tones are the metaphorical stretching of clarinet warm ups, then technical exercises are the calisthenics. In the second scenario from the introduction, if you would have made it to gym class on time and done your stretching, you would have warmed up your muscles, your blood would have been flowing, and you most likely would have been able to do more pull-ups and would not have been as sore for as long, if at all.
The point of warming up on the clarinet is to ease into playing so that you avoid stress, strain, and potential injury. You start your warm ups with long tones, then move on to technical exercises. When practicing your technical exercises, you want to start off slow and simple, and gradually move on to faster and more difficult material. This will help to ensure accuracy and ultimate success. A few examples of technical exercises that you can perform in your clarinet warm ups include running through your scales, running through your arpeggios, playing chromatic exercises, working on challenging areas of the clarinet, working on tonguing and articulation, etc.
Remember, these are examples; a general template to help you plan your own routine. Your warm-up routine should cater to your specific needs. You can ask your teacher to help you plan a warm up routine for you specifically. Warming up with scales and arpeggios throughout the full range of the clarinet helps to warm-up your finger technique, but you should also keep in mind the same principles from your long tone exercises.
You want a constant, consistent, and steady stream of air, and you want to pay attention to your air flow and speed, throat position, and intonation. You can do major scales and arpeggios. As mentioned above, in addition to diatonic exercises, you can also warm up with chromatic exercises. These exercises will ensure that every note is working properly, that there are no pads sticking, etc. You should play through your entire range, up and down, and you should listen for accuracy, consistency of tone, and consistency of intonation.
You can target specific spots of the clarinet that you have some difficulty with. The above exercise can help with this. You should start by playing the exercise very slowly. Make sure there is absolutely no space in sound between each note before you begin to speed the exercise up. You should construct other exercises based on areas of the clarinet that are difficult for you. These exercises can be used to warm up your tonguing technique.
Warming up is an essential part of any performance art. It is as much about physically warming up as it is about preparing yourself mentally. Warming up is as much about the singer performing vocal exercises as it is about the singer not wanting to talk to or see anyone in the half-hour before his or her performance.
To the novice, warming up may seem like a waste of time. At first, it seems boring, repetitive, and uninspiring. It seems unnecessary. You might feel the urge to skip over your warm-up routine in order to get to the more fun stuff that you actually want to practice. Not warming up can simply make you have a less-than-stellar performance, or it could leave you with a hand or jaw injury that will prevent you from playing for a couple of weeks. Clarinet warm ups may seem like a waste of time, but in actuality, they end up saving time.
Every musician should always warm up before long practice sessions and before any and all performances. Clarinet warm ups are an essential part of playing the clarinet. Chris K. Thankyou, that was very helpful. I also recommend doing a weird jumpy exercise as a warm up. I find it helps get my fingers moving!
Toggle navigation Contact Us Login. Clarinet warm ups It would be impossible to go over all of the possibilities for clarinet warm ups. Long Tones Long tones are an essential part of warming up on the clarinet. Technical Exercises If long tones are the metaphorical stretching of clarinet warm ups, then technical exercises are the calisthenics.
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