discussion booklet for HaveFunwithYourMusic

3.0 Warm Up for Practice
W
arming up can seem silly when you can just play. Why not warm up while playing
your piece? It may be easier to understand warming up for sports. Warming up
stretches your muscles so they won't be hurt. But playing scales and exercises for
the instrument to warm up is about so much more.
First of all, which muscles do you use when you play your instrument? When I started taking
lessons and worked on more advanced pieces that had my fingers moving a lot faster, I started
having problems with my wrists. A lot of people recommend finger stretching exercises or doing
yoga for instrumentalists. So at least warming up on your instrument with scales and related
exercises including long tones for winds and brass is important.
I spent a year playing exercises just to strengthen my ring and pinky fingers on both hands. They
seem to be naturally weaker, and at least on the flute are used less than other fingers. Exercises
like scales strengthen all of your fingers. In other words, they don’t miss strengthening your
weaker fingers, as playing certain styles of music might.
You also need to learn scale patterns to be a better sight reader in the future. You will recognize
scale patterns and be able to read music better if you already recognize the patterns, and also
can already play them! If you need to memorize music for performances, it will make these
recognizable note patterns or passages easier to memorize.