Building Good Habits:
A Practical Approach to Making Music
Warm Up and Musicianship Resources for the Young Band
There are many warm up books and resources on the market for middle-level band. So many, in fact, that to add another to the herd would seem redundant. Usually, most band directors either choose their warm up routines from several different resources or carefully select them from a single resource that is too comprehensive to be immediately useful. Furthermore, warm up time in the public school band often competes with announcements, instrument repairs, fundraisers and the like. What is needed is a clear, concise and attainable – but effective – warm up routine sequenced within a single source that encourages individual and group musical growth and responsibility.
Building Good Habits: A Practical Approach to Making Music is a 4th edition field-tested warm up method for the young band written and developed collaboratively by brothers Edward Schoendorff and Matthew Schoendorff. Edward has spent over two decades as a public school instrumental music educator in Michigan. He is an active proponent of new music for the middle school repertory and the success of his pedagogical approaches are evidenced in the consistent high ratings his ensembles receive at contests and festivals. While composer Matthew Schoendorff has since moved on from his former career as a public school music educator, the experience has proved invaluable. His direct encounter with the young band and continued collaboration with his brother have afforded him unique insights into the workings of the ensemble.
The result is a concise, functional, effective, and ready-to-use warm up method. This approach draws on the tried-and-true warm up routines of professional musicians,
adapted and arranged for the young band. It also introduces and promotes basic musicianship fundamentals. A lot of effort and consideration went into trimming away the extraneous exercises and content found in other resources instead to focus on a simple, direct and effective approach that can be expanded or abbreviated to tailor itself to any rehearsal.
Building Good Habits features an easy-to-use sequenced layout of exercises that includes long tone practice, slur studies, articulation exercises, two sets of chorales (basic and advanced), and diatonic and chromatic scale resources. Most exercises comprise consecutive subsets of graduated difficulty, and all are orchestrated for the full band. The book concludes with “The Back Of The Book,” a brief section outlining good habits for practicing, good tone production, intonation, sight-reading, and other resources. Part book page numbers are cross-referenced in the score, enhancing the book’s candid layout.
It is our hope that these warm up and musicianship resources will reinforce basic musicianship in your ensembles, provide efficient warm up routines, and allow you and your students to get down to the business of MAKING MUSIC!
Please contact for further details and for purchasing options.
© 2008 – 2021 by Matthew Schoendorff
Redesigned 2021 by Matthew Schoendorff, based on a format by Timothy Rosenberg
THE MUSIC OF MATTHEW SCHOENDORFF 