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[savio]

It helps to keep the mouthpiece some warm before playing. Then its not so cold.....wow    (strange english or.. )

Leif

[fluor]

Some players think plastic mouthpieces help them coming in cold

[Fishlips]

stop telling yourself you need a warm horn to sound good. Practice picking your horn up during the day and sounding good from the first note. Many private lesson teachers do this everyday and Orchestral trombonists too.

Excellent suggestion. Case in point...our principal trombonist was late to rehearsal and flopped in his chair right on the downbeat of the Mozart Overture to Magic Flute which has a rangy first part that stays around high C. He nailed every note, perfectly in tune, on a cold Bach 42B that came right out the trunk of his cold car.

In opera especially, you'll have LONG periods of rest and if on first part will often have to nail really high notes right out of the gate, or really soft low notes that don't speak well on a cold horn.

You can practice playing cold, true, but it's a mind-set too. You just gotta be good at it.

[cmillar]

All the precious suggestions and ideas are great.

Here's another.... say you have a cold horn coming out of the trunk of your car, or you just have time to get your horn out of it's case and may have only a few minutes before the gig.

Try finding some warm/hot water and a cup of some kind..... (maybe that coffee cup you had in the car on the way to the gig!)

Get your slide section, and pour the warm water into it..... move the slide a couple of times..... take the slide apart...... dump out the water safely somewhere .... (like in the tuba players bell or somewhere.)..... put slide back together.

This water will warm up your lead-pipe and slide, and make your horn respond nicely..... and helps to re-energizes your old slide cream or whatever as well in order to get you through the first set or to the first break.

I learnt this from Sharman King in Vancouver. He's the master at pulling the horn from the trunk of his car and getting a beautiful sound! Maybe he learnt this in the late sixties when he was in the Buddy Rich band and had to get off the bus and be ready to play.... or else he found that it worked for all the session work and gigging he's done over his career.

But, it

[macbone]

Trumpet great Bill Vacchiano allegedly ghosted the first note or 2 just before a tricky entrance, cold or not.  This works well for me too.  Also, just as athletes and soldiers train in extreme conditions, I think it's important to practice cold on purpose sometimes to see how well you can do.  This was mentioned earlier and I'm an advocate.  Train hard, battle easy!

[DocHoss]

The two most useful things for this are the two shortest: air, and ear.  Get used to blowing a little more air when you first start your playing session, and the lips will fall where they're supposed to.  And if you know what it's supposed to sound like (in your ears) and don't think much about the mechanics of it, it will just happen.  Then you win!

To let you know, I have quite a bit of experience playing cold.  When I was with Synergy Brass, we would often have 7:30am shows for band classes after travelling literally all night to get there from the show the night before.  This would usually leave us just enough time to pull the horn from the case, put it together, slam it to our lips, and start playing.  I had dozens of shows where the opening of "Procession of the Nobles" by the horn and trumpet would occur when I hadn't even gotten my trombone out of the case yet.  Man, was that fun!

I had to use air and ear to get through it.  Worked well.

[macbone]

Great advice and story, DocHoss.  I can empathize!

[fluor]

It is strange, but I feel that when I am not in top shape, I need much less warm up than if I am in super good shape...

I have been on some school concert tours, and then I don't practice much more than 30 minutes outside of the concerts. I won't be in top shape (good enough for what we are playing of course), and I don't need more than 5 minutes to feel comfortable

[WaltTrombone]

The two most useful things for this are the two shortest: air, and ear.  Get used to blowing a little more air when you first start your playing session, and the lips will fall where they're supposed to.  And if you know what it's supposed to sound like (in your ears) and don't think much about the mechanics of it, it will just happen.  Then you win!

To let you know, I have quite a bit of experience playing cold.  When I was with Synergy Brass, we would often have 7:30am shows for band classes after travelling literally all night to get there from the show the night before.  This would usually leave us just enough time to pull the horn from the case, put it together, slam it to our lips, and start playing.  I had dozens of shows where the opening of "Procession of the Nobles" by the horn and trumpet would occur when I hadn't even gotten my trombone out of the case yet.  Man, was that fun!

I had to use air and ear to get through it.  Worked well.

AMEN! Reminded me of a week of kiddie concerts I did a few years back, subbing with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. An early wakeup, a long drive, and the first piece on the program would be the Mambo from West Side Story, followed by the Finale of Beethoven's Fifth (on alto), then the last few bits of Tchaikowski's Romeo And Juliet, and 1812. That was some week! Nothing like smashing out some high B's first thing in the morning.

[Burgerbob]

Sam said what I do- I just put warm air through the horn. If you're sitting at a concert, there's no reason you can't pick it up a few bars early and warm it up.

Some days, I have to go to jazz band rehearsal five minutes after a class with no warmup. I just treat what I'm playing like a warmup (hopefully it's not too low or high) and it all works out. I usually only warm up for maybe 7 minutes on a good day, though.