Flute Playing Videos: WARM UP with Krzysztof Kaczka (1/10)

This is the first of a ten part video series we recorded with top international flautist Krzysztof Kaczka. Throughout the videos Krzysztof will talk about various techniques and exercises to help improve your flute playing, whatever your level.

1. Flute Playing – Warm Up

In this first video Krzysztof describes his daily warm up routine. Although the video is around 6 minutes that’s him condensing and outlining his 90 minute warm up for us. Just take a minute to digest that…90 minutes for a warm up?! We suspect that most people don’t allocate 6 mins to warming up let alone 90!

We’re equally guilty of this here at Dawkes and of course everything is relative and not all of us are international flautists. However, it may be helpful to think of your warm up as a percentage of your overall practice time. For example 20-25% would perhaps be a good starting point. So, if you’re going to do 20-25 mins practice of an evening then perhaps you should be doing a 5 minute warm up. After all, we’re practicing to build our tone and technique not just to try and play the right notes.

Krzysztof touches on various methods in the video and although you may not have time to do all of it (who does!), it’s a case of prioritising to help your body prepare to play. The key points are staying relaxed, expelling air and building strength in your embouchure and diaphragm. Perhaps a few long notes, the expelling of air exercises as shown and a little deep breathing would be good to start with. You’ll be amazed to see what a difference it has on the rest of your practice time and how much it radically improves your overall sound.

We’ll be back soon with the second video so stay tuned to our Flute Newsletters for the latest release.