The Ultimate Warm-Up

My main project since getting home (and after that post yesterday) has been to compose an extensive, rigorous, and comprehensive warm up routine for oboe. I've had various versions of warm ups that I've made in the past three years, composites of various teachers' recommendations and my own special formulas.

But yesterday, I was inspired to create an even more in depth warm up for three reasons - first, I wanted to incorporate some of the ideas and concepts that I have acquired from my studies this summer, second, I wanted to reorient the focus of my warm up to really target those areas in which I need to improve before grad school auditions, and third, I wanted to see how much I could make a daily warm up truly integrated, to not just get my oboe playing warmed up, but my mental processes, my listening, and my entire body.

So I started by expanding the sheet I had already, adding in some of the great warm up exercises I've gotten from teachers over the summer. Just glancing over the list, I count a total of 14 different teachers that have influenced the list or given me one or more of the exercises. It's amazing that I've been privileged enough to have worked with all of these top teachers.

In terms of targeting specific areas, I am really focusing on my breathing and being relaxed and open. These go pretty much hand in hand. So far, all of the teachers I have worked with in the past couple of months have all given me the same basic critique - tension. And most of the time, even just mentioning it gets me playing ten times better because I've done a lot of work in Alexander, enough to really help once I am conscious of the tension. But the issue is staying conscious of my body and of tension. So I am going to be focusing heavily on incorporating more Alexander into my practicing, as well as being a little more dogmatic about doing Alexander before I start practicing. It's much easier to ignore that part of consciousness in practice, because believe it or not, to do it right does take an enormous amount of mental energy. It's easy to be lazy in that respect. I plan on doing yoga as well, when the school year starts.

This morning, the difference constructive rest made before I started practice was phenomenal. I had really gotten a little twisted up, particularly in the past couple of days (traveling, tired, everything finally catching up to me was finally taking its toll). But after some seaweed arms and shoulder moves and such, I was feeling a lot better.

One major change in how I'm making these warm up routines - I'm adding a record sheet. Often it is difficult to keep track of things - which scale haven't I focused on lately? What exercise have I been avoiding? So I've made a series of questions for each day that I will fill out as the warm up progresses, to keep track both of what keys I'm covering and such, but also to keep me accountable. It's so easy, particularly in the middle of a busy semester, to say "I'm feeling so tired this morning. I really don't want to work on F# two octaves today..." and then keep putting it off and putting it off because surprise, I'm tired every day. The record sheets will force me to be honest with myself about covering weak areas in my practicing and not constantly revisiting things I'm good at.

Each day, I have a questions asking "Items Skipped?" So if I have limited time and decide to skip my minor scales, for instance, I will look back the next day and not allow myself to skip them again - in fact, I will spend extra time on them, if possible. The record sheet also has room to record which number exercises I've done in Barrett (or Ferling) and what keys I transposed them to that day. I also have room to record areas I had trouble with - what scales I wasn't as adept at, for example.

Using the first oboe warm up/record sheet pair as a model, I created a Baroque oboe warm up and record sheet as well.

Then, I did the same for eartraining. The eartraining practice sheet is a lot more complicated than either of the warm ups, since I have incorporated all of the material I have covered ever into it. Obviously I won't be able to practice every single thing on the list every day in eartraining, so the record sheet has been composed with a little bit of a different strategy. For a new skill to really solidify in the brain, one must practice it three times in three days. So for each skill area (eg interval training, heptachord shift, score reading, sightsinging) I have created a series of questions, which occurs three times, under the headings of day 1, day 2, and day 3. I can print out as many of these as I'd like, so once I fill out a page, I'll just print another (note to self: it would be good to make these double sided). For the eartraining record sheets, the most important part of each series of questions is "Observations." I also frequently include "Primary Causes of Error" as a question as well as "Weaknesses."

So are these sheets actually practical? Well, so far today I have tested the oboe warm up, and it seems to be very excellent. I only made one or two adjustments as I was going through it. I hope today also to be able to test out both the Baroque oboe warm up system and my eartraining practice system, and make enough adjustments that I will be ready to print out all three and start using them tomorrow. At any rate, it was very helpful to go through all of my eartraining material and review while considering what areas I need to focus on.

I'll also be finishing filling out Prof Ploger's Musicianship Self-Evaluation today, and maybe revamp the eartraining practice sheet to better reflect the areas I need to work on.

http://marianneploger.com/testyourself.html

So anyway. I'm very excited about all of this. Other than that, I am hoping to get out to buy some canvases today, because I have several paintings in my head that are prodding at me, wanting to be actualized. And I am in a very painty mood. Here's a picture of the last painting I was working on last summer, it's not quite finished yet...