Vocal warm-ups.
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If I attempted a vocal performance.... Whether using these warm up routines or not.... The audience would end up GIVING ME the Exhaled Hiss! So I guess, warming up the audience isn't too bad of an idea!
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HOWEVER: As trumpet players, we can absolutely benefit from either reading or thinking of the phrasing of the notes we play through vocal cues.
Another teacher I studied under while living in New York City, Claudio Roditi, taught me the importance of stopping on difficult phrases, stepping back and then first attempt to sign then through, before picking up the horn and making another attempt to progress through the passage. With this skill (even if you can't carry a tune, like me) you can still feel the flow of the phasing through the larynx/pharynx and ear/mouth coordination. This technique makes it so much easier to understand were my trumpet phrasing is going wrong, and through vocal attempts, find the solution and then apply this to my trumpet phrasing approach.
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While not related to vocal "warm ups" there is another important concept to using vocal cues for phrasing passages on the trumpet. Another teacher, not necessarily formally but though default, actually his fault for choosing me for his quintet, Eddie Brookshire (a bassist) taught me the importance of reading the words written UNDER THE NOTES when they are present that takes priority over the notes that may be written above the words. Here is Eddie's wisdom behind this concept:
Eddie sees the notes written as the song writer's way of "graphing" the phrasing of the lyrical component to a song. Songs are there to provide a message, and there is no stronger way to provide that message from the intent of the song writer then reproducing the word phrasing. But sometimes as Eddie describes, the graphical depiction of that quarter note, eighth note, dotted eighth note to sixteenth note just cannot accurately "graph" the spoken, written intent of the phrase. To get around this, just read the words, not the notes, and your phrasing as to the intent of the song writer will be spot on.
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For text-painting, see J.S. Bach.
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@Vulgano-Brother said in Vocal warm-ups.:
For text-painting, see J.S. Bach.
J.S. BACH IS STILL ALIVE AND I CAN MAKE AN APPOINTMENT TO SEE HIM?
WOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
moshe, smart aleck extraordinaire who gets on everyone's nerves
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@moshe said in Vocal warm-ups.:
moshe, smart aleck extraordinaire who gets on everyone's nerves
As long as they're not in the back. Those suckers really hurt, right Cyclone!
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Lis Lewis' "Singer's First Aid Kit" comes with a great CD of vocal warmup exercises. Working with this really opened my eyes to the difference that a decent warmup routine can make.
I found that playing trumpet for 20 or 30 minutes has a similar effect on the vocal chords as a decent warmup. Some vocal warm-ups involve a limited amount of air flowing over the vocal folds - limited by humming, rolling the tongue, or what the vocal world calls "lip trills". Maybe it's the steady relatively small air flow blowing a horn that warms up the voice? -
Interesting article, VB. I hadn't heard of the singing on your back before, but I'm going to try that.
This isn't a very scientific response, but from experience I can tell an immediate and beneficial relationship between singing and playing trumpet.
