By Laurie Niles: This weekend vote is inspired by an article last week by Australian violinist Rupert Guenther, called Are Warm Up Exercises Necessary? In the article, he talks about a former teacher who "blew my ideas out of the water" by suggesting that warm ups were not necessary.![warming up violinist]()
Certainly, this goes against conventional wisdom. For example, I have a scale routine that I practice like religion, whenever I play. Heck, the British violin pedagogue Simon Fischer wrote an entire book called Warming Up! All of my teachers talked about warming up and offered ideas for doing so.
And of course, this begs the question, what is warming up? Do we need dedicated warm-up exercises for the left hand and right hand? For the mind? How about for the shoulders, neck, torso, and various muscle groups in the arms and wrists?
Guenther concluded he ultimately he needed very little warm-up; "I found that playing any music expressively with a warmth of tone that I love warms me up in all aspects of my playing very quickly." I've heard other arguments against extensive warm-ups - Augustin Hadelich, for example, cited time constraints, saying that is is possible to warm up with repertoire - that a long scale routine can take away time needed for working on new rep. Of course, that was one of the world's finest violinist talking - he is at an extraordinarily high level and is constantly playing!
Where do you stand, when it comes to warming up? Do you feel it is necessary? Do you have a warm-up routine? If so, what is your routine, and what is its focus? (Maybe you do scales, maybe you do yoga!) Or maybe you believe in warming up, but never really get to it. Or maybe you don't warm up, and that works for you! Please participate in the vote, then describe your thoughts and practices in the comments.
You might also like:
- Are Warm Up Exercises Necessary?
- Violinist.com interview with Simon Fischer: Warming Up
- Warming Up, Going Back to Basics
Enjoying Violinist.com? Click here to sign up for our free, bi-weekly email newsletter. And if you've already signed up, please invite your friends! Thank you.