I am just about to embark on a practise and wondering what to start with when I thought I would ask you all what you do to warm up.

Sometimes I start with scales or pieces I know, sometimes straight into studies or new work.

I plan what I want to focus on over the week but never really think about what to start with.

What do you all do?

Cheers
Spark

I tend to start with the last piece I did the day or lesson before, identify the problems with it, then spend my practice working through them. Then when I start getting frustrated with that, I start on scales, variations and perpetual motions, then start on another piece and go through the same process as the first one, then back to scales/variations/PMs and so on and so forth. It fits nicely with my teacher because she identifies 3-4 pieces to work on each week so I work on one at a time with regular scales breaks.


Might not work for people who don't love doing scales etc though

Scales (just a few short ones) then studies... although this afternoon I warmed up with a few fast Scottish fiddle tunes

I start with bow/arm height exercises, which are virtually silent, then various open string bowing prac. After that it's a first finger exercise, which I now combine with bowing prac (do it first in lower, then in upper half and will prob add in whole bows today too). Then I do some scales, time taken varying on how good my intonation is that day. I can sometimes spend a while tuning 3rd finger against the lower open string and first finger against 2 strings higher etc. Then I move onto pieces in my tutor books that I'm working on. I usually finish with come brief scales as well - backwards normally!

If prac is going very badly and I just can't seem to get anything right, I stop and do something like long bows, scales or earlier pieces in the books to get my confidence going again and/or steady myself.

Whole thing takes 15-30 mins depending on how tired I am!!

I start with see-saw exercise, then long bows. Sometimes upper half/lower half exercises. Then scales, and then my piece(s) that I'm currently working on.

Then I pick up stuff randomly and play it, just because I can

Then I play flute

Scales (three ocatves and double stopped), excerpts from Kreutzer study No.2 and bowing techniques.

I have a mug of steaming hot coffee...

then start...

Perhaps I should go for a wee run or something?

This is maybe just me, because I'm a bit weird like that, but the two things I like to do to warm up are:

1) playing really, really difficult pieces, that are way beyond my ability level. I find the Bach Chacconne from Partita no 2 is a good one; I can't play it for toffee, but I mess about with it for a short while, slowly attempting each of the chords individually, and then playing the very few simpler bits which I can play, and really dig in, putting lots of effort and expression into it (it often ends up sounding like the stick of my bow is a wee bitty stressed - that's when I stop with the piece!), and I find that this really helps, because once I start doing my proper practise, the instrument has opened up quite significantly. She's a rather sweet toned, not overly powerful baby, but this definitely helps!

2) improvising (sometimes I even end up writing it down!) just moving my fingers all over the strings, and practising chords and runs and glissandos and spicatto and staccato and legato and various positions and all sorts completely arbitrarily. I once tried transposing the Elgar cello concerto, which I adore, but it sounded ridiculous as in order to fit all the notes in, I had to take it up quite high, and there was lots of squeaky seventh position rather than the beautiful rich, warm, mellow yearning of the cello.

Thanks everyone for your ideas

I always used to start with scales but found I was taking up most of my practise time just doing scales - I'm starting to wean myself off them now!

I find scales one of the physically harder things on violin and never use them to warm up. I have a 90 minute schedule of exercises which I do early every morning, I treat it as a warm up for the day after which I don't really need to do much for each later practice session. The 90 minutes starts with LH stuff (Carl Flesch Urstudien, Vibrato etc), and includes things like Sevcik and Casorti bowing, Ricci LH technique, Schradieck, Sevcik Op8 etc. After that, I usually play consistently for the whole day

I do the exact same thing I'm about to start the mozart concerto in G, and i am absolutely in love with the cadenza!! (first movement) i adore it and i can't wait till i can play it. at the moment there are only a few lines/certain bars that i can play but i love to play them It feels great to be playing something so hard/professional sounding, even if i'm only playing 10 seconds of it, then skipping 2 lines then playing a different 2 bars... etc. Definately not a good practise regieme though it's not part of my actual practise though... i just like it

Scales, bowing, lefthand exercises, deep breath, attention to posture and then on with the session!

Depends on the size of the mug...

W

Giggling

Tuning up!
Then G major 3 octaves (because it helps me to check i've got all my strings in tune). I play G major slowly and then just keep going up and down it, getting faster each time, to get my fingers going. Then i pick a few other random scales to do...
Then Sevcik studies!!
yay
Then i start on pieces

I sit on a radiator

Stumbled across this web page and remembered this thread from weeks ago. For anyone with an urge to do a few gentle excercises before playing to help avoid injuries but can't think what they need to do then the first factsheet is helpful. Other interesting things on the site too.

http://www.bapam.org.uk/perf_advice.html

I start off with long and short open stringed bowing then do scales in long and short, then long, short, staccato, then long, short, staccato, accented finally I do my scales slurred.

Helps me to get warmed up always something I've done with clarinet pupils do as many techniques as you know to warm up to your scales and arpeggios. You get to know yours scales and arpeggios quickly this way and practise technique.

With viola I find this helps my bowing and my understanding of how the techniques are executed on the instrument.

I've started warming up by doing my string crossing exercises then slow to a bit faster scales, then going through the pieces I have to learn, seems much more effective and I can notice the improvement to my previous method of just randomly going through the same things!

Out of interest, do people do much playing/practise immediately before their lessons ?

I don't but I do have my lesson in the morning over 30 miles from where I live!

no, becuase I have lessons at school so im in lessons until my violin lesson.
x

I usally play a tune to warm up.
It genrally has slow and fast sections and sharps and flats. An example is 'Vivaldi's Presto'( the third movement) However that's for the violin, but the same rule applies for any instrument really!

Hope this helps!