The Arpeggi-scale Warm-Up

I had come across a video of a percussionist playing arpeggios in many different keys with some variations and it inspired me to create my own version of this warm-up.

This warm-up works on a few different core skills: arpeggios, peripheral vision/muscle memory, rotations, and endurance.

Somehow this becomes a bit of an “everything” warm-up (although I do have one of those already for a later entry) which can be used for daily practice as a way to say “Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening” to the instrument. We spend more time with our instruments than we spend with even the closest people to us, so it is important to get to know the instrument like you get to know people, and this warm-up ends up being the perfect greeting.

The first time you play this warm-up you may just stick to C major as you will really have to familiarize yourself with each mode/cell. Pay close attention to the sounds you are making. I always play in the center of the bars, even at the brighter tempos. Each cell expands 2 full octaves which means you really need to differentiate your touch between the bass note as well as the top note.

Repeat each cell until you feel comfortable, then move perpetually to the next cell, until you make your way through all 24 keys. Then, you can start limiting yourself to 4x per cell, 2x, and then eventually just 1x per cell, removing the repeats entirely and playing it down. That can take some time - this exercise should be worked through over days or weeks, and is one that can serve you to make a constant part of your practice routine. Please feel free to contact me if you would like to talk deeper on this exercise!

Download the pdf here.