Having a good warm-up routine or strategy is one of the best things you can do for your oboe playing. Taking the time to concentrate on the “little things” (that actually are quite big things in your oboe playing!) before moving on to your etude work will give you some of the biggest leaps in progress and set you up for a much better time with those etudes. I usually go through some warm-ups for oboe with my students like what is listed below every lesson so that they are set up for a good lesson and also so they understand how to warm up and how important it is.
There are some basic principles for warm-ups that should be the focus of almost every one. You should always be in tune (get that metronome out!); you should always strive for a good start and finish to your notes; you should always be relatively comfortable – not tense, not hunched where your breathing feels restricted, etc. One example of an exception to the comfortable rule would be drills that seek to extend your endurance. A little discomfort because you are waiting a little longer to take a breath is fine, just don’t be reckless about it! Another suggestion is to start, especially your very first notes of the day, in the middle range of the oboe. These are the easiest to play and so you might find yourself being a little “out of order” playing in the middle range, then upper, then lower, for example, to start from the easiest and then do the harder notes. And finally, the last rule for warm-ups is to aim for consistency of tone across registers. Don’t let the high G or any other notes stick out because it is so much more vibrant. Make the notes around it more vibrant and maybe dampen your G some. Same with two-fingered C. The opposite with notes like high B. You might need to work extra hard for vibrancy in this note to match the notes around it.
Here are some warm-up ideas that I have broken up into beginner, intermediate, and advanced as I could. You can pick different ones depending on what skills you want to work on. You might be at different levels in different categories. Make sure the beginner suggestion is perfect and perfectly easy before moving up! No matter how long you have been playing, we could all use some “review” from time to time. And lastly, whenever I mention using a metronome, I almost always use 60 bpm for warm-ups.
Long Tones
Long tones are a classic warm-up. If you don’t want to do any other warm-ups, do some long tones, and I would even strongly suggest to do some basic long tones even if you have other warm-ups planned. All of these warm-ups are really just variations on the long tone.
Beginner – Hold one note for as long as you can with good tone. Use your tuner, be relaxed, and listen for a consistent sound with a tone that you like. Think about good oboists you have heard and try to sound like them on that one long note! Continue to do this with more notes. Work through a scale, or maybe start in the middle range!
Intermediate – Add a crescendo and diminuendo to your long tones. Start as softly as possible, practicing your soft attacks, crescendo to as loud as possible, and then diminuendo back down to fading away as soft as possible. The whole time, don’t sacrifice tone quality. Your loudest is only as loud as you can get without distorting the note. You can do this with a metronome and time your crescendo and diminuendo, or you can simply try to drag out the process for as long as you can striving for absolute control over every bit of dynamic change.
Advanced – While doing your long tones with the crescendo/diminuendo, start changing notes during the long tone. I would start with octaves. Leap from the lower octave to the higher octave when you think your crescendo has reached its peak and diminuendo on the higher note. You can do this with any interval and it is a good way to get those intervals in your ear. To make this even more challenging, switch back to the lower note right at the end of your diminuendo. The goal is to have smooth transitions between notes and to be able to leap to a note and be immediately in tune. Don’t put away the tuner!
Half-hole Exercises (and anything similar)
Half-whole technique is a common struggle for new oboists especially. This is a great example of something that I like to get systematic about. If you have trouble transitioning to the half-hole, then it would be a great idea to do it more!
Since half-hole D is the note in focus, I usually use a D major scale. Starting on low D play the scale except alternate every note with the half-whole D. D, half-whole D, E, half-whole D, F, half-whole D, and so forth. Go as slowly as you need (maybe start at 60 bpm) and crank the metronome slowly up as it gets easier. I highly recommend using a metronome for this because I like it when progress is measurable.
You can do the same sort of thing with any tricky note or technique. Having trouble getting used to forked F? left F? My students often have one note that trips them up and the cure is to just play it! Be relentless and it will become habit quickly. I am sure you can come up with little exercises for yourself that will target whatever technical difficulty you are having! The goal is to play it correctly as much as possible, even if that means excruciatingly slowly at first.
Tonguing
Beginner – Using legato articulation at 60 bpm, play whole notes on the same note concentrating on all the same things you would on a long tone, but also striving for clean and clear articulations at the beginning of each whole note. If you can at least do four measures well, then progress to four measures of half notes. Do the same with quarter notes, then eighth notes.
Intermediate – Once you can consistently articulate legato notes on a repeated note, start playing your scales the same way. You can still start with whole notes and progress through eighth notes and even add triplets. You could also stay on one note but add dynamic changes.
Advanced – Now put all the rhythms together in one blow and try to reach sextuplets. I would start with four beats of each rhythm and you might want to start with quarter notes instead of whole notes so that you can get through the exercise in one breath which makes it easier. Using one note for the whole exercise, play four beats of quarter notes, four of eighth notes, four triplets, four sixteenths, four quintuplets, and finally four beats of sextuplets. When this is easy, do only two beats of each, and then one. Then (possibly going back to four beats per rhythm) start changing notes every time the rhythm changes. I would try this first in the middle range such as G to E and then try the upper and lower ranges.
An important thing to remember through these articulation exercises is to not restrict your air but focus on blowing freely. Enough air and relaxation in your throat really frees up the tongue to move faster. Also, phrase to each beat which will also help with not falling behind your metronome.
This is a great way to increase your tonguing speed and get used to changing rhythms quickly as well so that they are not foreign when you come across the occasion quintuplet rhythm.
Vibrato
This is very similar to the tonguing exercise. While the general progression here is to get faster and faster with vibrato, fast vibrato is not the best, because you need to be able to play with vibrato at any speed and have control over it. Beginner here is in context of learning vibrato and not students generally. Vibrato in general is what I would consider a more advanced skill, but these assume that you can do vibrato at least some.
Beginner – Still at 60 bpm, play a long tone (with your tuner checking you!) and add quarter note speed vibrato pulses. These are awkward sounding but great especially if you have just started learning vibrato or if you have trouble slowing your vibrato down. I highly recommend playing your vibrato from you abdomen and not your throat, so part of your warm-up could be panting like a dog to feel those muscles before picking up your oboe. When I was correcting my vibrato in this way, I needed to pant between every time I did this so that I would not lose track of those muscles.
Then, as you might have guessed, progress to eighth notes. Continue the progression all the way through sextuplets if you can. If you are newer to vibrato, you might be limited in how quickly you can vibrate so just keep practicing and you will slowly get faster and have more control. Even if you can vibrate very quickly, I still believe it is beneficial to spend some warm-up time on really, really slow vibrato to develop absolute control of those muscles.
Intermediate – Add vibrato to your long tone exercises, especially those that I labeled advanced and practice having steady vibrato while doing a crescendo or diminuendo. Then you might want to practice your vibrato getting faster as your crescendo and slower as you diminuendo.
Advanced – Add vibrato to scales. Start with every other note in your scale having vibrato to gain control over exactly when you vibrato starts and stops and play with at least triplet or sixteenth rhythm vibrato. You can get faster and experiment from there. Then play the whole scale with vibrato on every note and increase the speed at which you play the scale as you improve.
Scales
I am not going to say much about scales because I think I have mentioned using scales in all the warm-ups that I have listed. But I do want to note that you should not be lazy on your scales. Make everything expressive, and that includes scales. If you can make a scale a beautiful work of art, than you are ready for any music! Be creative with your dynamics, rhythms, and tone color. If you have a specific technique that you are working on improving, then find a way to work it into scale practice and kill two birds with one stone.