How to Warm Up for Playing the Trombone

Video Transcript

"All right, now that we've got our mouthpiece snugly in our lead pipe, we're going to push some air through and warm up the instrument. Now, warming up is just like breathing and getting warm air through the instrument. It's essential to build your embouchure and your muscle memory to basically warm up by making a long tone. You make your tones by buzzing your lips as we have shown. Now what I'm doing is just letting my muscles become acclimated to playing; putting warm air into the instrument. You might hear a t, t, t sound, that's t, tonguing. Tonguing is what differentiates the notes. So if I was working with my overtones and not tonguing, you'd hear a slur. You'd hear a little slide in between each note, thusly. Now what I'm doing is just tightening and loosening my lips. Now when I practice tonguing, it gives you articulation to define certain notes. I'll do the same thing but tongue it. T, t, t, t, t, it's basically the letter T while you're buzzing your lips. That's tonguing and some warm up exercises which you can also exercise scales while warming up or intervals, which are the notes that are left on the instrument and the mouthpiece. You can also... and practice how air is elongating in the instrument. You're lowest note, the notes are endless depending on the strength of your embouchure."