I warm up for about 15 minutes or so. Only because I have limited time when I get home from work, if I want to play music, my teacher assigns me to work on. It seems to be fine for me. Course these songs I am playing are from 1 to 3 pages long. So maybe one requires more time for warm ups when you work on larger pieces? Or to each his own 🙂

I normally only “warm up” for about five minutes. However, I am not very advanced in my playing, so my songs don’t need all that much warming up in the first place. Like Angela, I typically warm up by playing previously memorized pieces.

For me, warming up is necessary because I am primarily a keyboard musician. I need to sit at the harp and put my hands in the proper position for harp playing before I launch into a piece. I need to subtly remind my hands that this is a harp and not a keyboard. I like to go through some large chords and arpeggios just to make sure my hands are doing the right thing before I start actually playing a piece. I also warm up on the keyboard, but in a different way……just to get things moving and my mind centered, and I wouldn’t think of singing without a warmup first…..it’s just me though.

Depending on amount of time available to practice, I usually warm-up for about 30 minutes before launching into my solo pieces. There have been times when I have had to practice performing and beginning a piece without any warm-up because there would be no time for ample warm-up at the performance venue. However, I regularly do warm-ups because it keeps my hand in a correct and relaxed position as well as makes my hands warm so I don’t injure my hands or play with bad technique, similar to a dancer or an athlete.

I do Salzedo Conditioning Exercises (1st 6, both hands at once), plus some others made up of things I’ve found hard to do…total time around 10 minutes. If I’m playing opera or something later in the day, I’ve always done my conditioning exercises and run through the part…usually playing with the recording…so that is at tempo, but only after I’ve done my exercises. (I record off the sections I play in so I can go directly from one section to the next.) It may be quite a while before I play, as in load harp, drive there, unload, get into venue, tune, wait for start of rehearsal or performance, wait for entrance, etc….but I feel ready. I would never just go out and play without doing my exercises and some run-thru at home first. For a wedding, I do my exercises and whatever pieces I want to review before I go. A LRO (living room only) harpist may have different goals, so their warming up might be totally different. Everyone’s situation is unique, so whatever they’re comfortable with is right for them.