FRIEDLANDER'S H O T E L  R O O M WARM-UP

An "Easy" Way to Get Ready to Play
This routine works agility, strength and, my favorite, bilateral coordination.

This is a warm-up I came up with while on a recent tour with my band. When I am on tour I am often confronted with very little time to practice and less than ideal surroundings to play. I needed to create a calm but challenging warm-up routine that would get my blood circulating, get my hands working, but also allow for creativity and improvisation which engages my brain too.

A WORD ABOUT WARM-UPS

Ron Leonard (former principal cellist of LA Philharmonic, a great cellist) was heard to say that one should be ready to play in 5 minutes or less. This was a bit of a jolt to me because I was at the time locked into an elaborate (and long!) warm-up involving scales and 3rds, octaves, etc. I realized that I had convinced myself I couldn't play well unless I did this entire warm-up routine and this just wasn't true!

I've come to believe that each day may in fact require a slightly different warm-up. One day I may need to do long tones, the other speed exercises, another day might require that I hardly play at all before performing, later in the week I may need a good hour of playing before performing.

The other thing I found was that my long warm-up routine that I hadn't changed for months had caused my brain to disengage: I was on automatic. Once this happened the work I was doing was of very little use.

So I suggest sitting at the cello and getting a sense of what you feel your need to get working. Before you even play think about this. In the beginning you might draw a blank, you may have no ideas of what to do. This is partly because of being on automatic. After a little while experimenting with different routines and exercises you will start to get an idea of what you need to do each time you sit down to play.

Give this one a try and I suggest doing the warm-up and then moving to some other exercises or etudes or just get to work. It's a good one for when you're traveling and don't have too much time to practice each day or when you have only a few minutes to get ready to play.