A five-minute warm-up for any instrument

A warm-up does not need to be long. It needs to be the same every time, so your hands, voice and ears get the message: practice has started.

The five minutes

1. One minute: body. Shake out your hands and shoulders, check your posture, take three slow breaths.
2. One minute: one sound. Play or sing a single long note. Listen to how it starts, holds and ends. Aim for even and calm.
3. Two minutes: one scale, slowly. Pick any scale. Go up and down at a tempo where nothing is rushed.
4. One minute: one easy phrase. Something you already play well. Finish on a good note, in both senses.

Why it works

Slow and simple is the point. You are not training anything new yet, you are arriving. Starting with something you can do well makes the harder work that follows feel less like a wall.

Make it automatic

Do it at the same time and place, and let the routine decide for you. In Better Musician a routine like this is a saved list of timed steps, so you press start and follow along instead of deciding what to play.