CJ Replay: New Thoughts on Warm-Ups

(From the Choral Journal article, “Aural Theory Training in the Choral Warm-Up: A Warm-Up Curriculum,” by Edward Cetto and Gabrielle Dietrich.)

 

       The first five minutes of the choral rehearsal have the potential to be a dynamic, vital, interactive learning experience. It can be a time to engage the kinesthetic, musical, and cognitive intelligences of each singer. A warm-up incorporating the above skills, made possible by creative and strategic pedagogical planning on the part of the conductor, can enhance the whole rehearsal, and eventually the overall performing ability of the ensemble.

       Unfortunately, warm-ups, for many of us, are in a rut, the major scale being the culprit. Too often, we warm up only the vocal mechanism, singing the familiar chromatically ascending major scales and arpeggios along with the piano in rehearsal after rehearsal. Endless chains of five-tone major scales may challenge the voice, but not the mind. The chromatic major rut disengages the brain by exact repetition of the same mundane pattern, never accessing the endless multiplicity of varying major and minor patterns appearing in the repertoire.

       Furthermore, “monkey hear, monkey do” of traditional five-tone chromatic warm-ups never seems to move from unconscious to conscious comprehension. It is alarming that an ensemble may move through all twelve major keys several times over the course of a warm-up, yet never consciously acknowledge any key, let alone the movement from one tonality to the next. This lack of cognitive engagement does nothing to build the singers’ overall musical understanding. By denying our natural tendency to become creatures of habit, and using the daily warm-up as a developmental sequence, we may introduce a new security to major and minor scales and difficult tonal patterns.