Warming up is critical to advance as a musician, to prepare for your daily practice routine and build endurance and chops for the long term. Warming up also gets your limbs working comfortably, loosens your tendons and muscles and prepares you to play easier and better for your practice time, rehearsal, concert, recording or gig.

All athletes warm up before competing or exercising daily. Runners stretch their leg muscles, baseball players throw a ball slowly, gymnasts warm up everything! You get my point. It is to our advantage as musicians to warm up so that we can play better and easier. Make warming up a part of your regular practice regimen. It won't just better you for that practice session, use it to build your long term control, technique and ability.

These exercises are designed to give you specific warm ups for your daily use. They are also designed to help you come up with creative ideas that fit you personally. These rhythms and patterns are repeated but can be used with many different sticking, accents, flams, diddles and other variations.

I call this "mind reading". We will take a simple rhythm and eventually come up with many ideas for variations on this rhythm as possible. This is not exhaustive however. For more ideas, use your own creative genius. I try to get my students to come up with these enhancements/variations in their head without having written music. If you are already reading a lot of music, try coming up with ideas for enhancements/variations in your head without any written music in front of you - "mind reading". For example, the following rhythm can be played using many different variations.

Now, play the same rhythm, but add an accent on the first sixteenth note. After you're comfortable with that, put the accent on the 2nd sixteenth note. When comfortable, place the accent on the 3rd and so on.

Now play 2 accents per measure - an accent on "1" and an accent on "e". You get the idea.

Now go back and do this all over starting with the left hand. Then change the sticking to RRLL, then to RLRR LRLL. Once you have a rhythm, you can add accents, diddles, sticking, flams and more.

You can do this by reading on paper or reading in your mind, giving your creative slant a work-out!

Here are some exercises to get started with.

I have found that when I use the idea of playing warm up patterns by thinking of as many variations for a given rhythm as possible, it overflows in my other playing as well. Whether I am playing drumset, rudimental snare drum improvisation, mallets, hand drums, etc., my mind is in the habit of creating rhythms and variations and "seeing music in my mind" as opposed to reading on paper. Again, this is what I call Mind Reading.

I teach and practice using written music as well. However, since so much of our musical growth and practice is geared to reading, why not practice some "mind reading" in your playing to cover both reading and creative practice habits!

Remember, warming up and practice is crucial if we are to grow as musicians. When we are warmed up, we play better and safer, with more accuracy and control. Isn't that what you want?

Make warming up/chop building a regular part of your practice routine. I bring a small practice pad with me to warm up before a concert, gig, rehearsal, recording, etc. Whether I am playing drumset, mallets, timpani, concert percussion, or hand drums, I am warmed up. When you are warmed up, you play with more consistency, ease and with more musicality.

The exercises contained here are from a book entitled WARM UPS and MIND READING for the SMART PERCUSSIONIST by Joel Smales. It is published by the Stick Works division of Phantom Publications and is available from your local music retailer or from Empire Music Publishers, P.O. Box 1344 Studio City, CA 91614-0344