Resources
First, a couple notes about scales:
One of my teachers once said, “90% of music is tonal; 90% of that is major; 90% of minor is diatonic.” That’s not entirely accurate, but I think there is some truth there. FLUENCY in major scales will take a lot of folk a long way. Improvisers will need more.
Jazz Journalist, Doug Ramsey, has quoted Charlie Shoemake thus: “In all my teaching (including currently), I have never used the now-prevalent modal titles for scales (Dorian, Lydian, etc.). There are two reasons. One, none of the people from whom I learned ever once used that language. And two, it makes things much more complicated than necessary. There are four big-deal scales that cover 99% of all harmony. They are the major, the harmonic minor, the melodic minor, and the diminished. . . . To call the C major scale starting on D ‘the Dorian mode’ seems silly to me, just adding an unnecessary title.” (Note: I am NOT an improvising musician; but Andy Martin and Ted Nash studied with Charlie, and they turned out OK.)
AND . . . perform scales like music – like songs – don’t just recite them – nobody wants to listen to that.
That said, as Emil Faber once said, “Knowledge is good.”
Drones . . .
. . . are a powerful tool. Use them. Timothy Meyers’ article, Why Practicing with a Drone Can Boost Your Playing Fast, is excellent and Benjamin Coy’s tuningdrones.com is great. Play slow scales, arpeggios, and intervals over drones.
NOTE : when playing with drones or any play-along track, it best to play the tracks through speakers rather than headphones or earbuds. It’s easier to hear pitch, beats, and sonority, in the air around you than it is inside your head. Since the bell of a brass instrument works in both directions, sound waves in the air can enter it and can affect lip vibration. There is almost a sense of gravity subtly pulling towards maximum resonance – you can feel when the beats settle down – but only if the air around you is activated. Christopher Leuba tells us in A Study of Musical Intonation, “I suspect that the majority of successful brass players at the professional level depend upon “lip feel”, i.e., the feedback of wave patterns (resultant tones) from other instruments around them, travelling into the bell of the instrument and against the lips, as the primary guide for pitch placement, rather than just listening.”
"Warm-Up" vs. "Daily Routine"
David Vining says this :”I like to think of a daily routine as being different from a warm-up. A warm-up is just playing a few notes in preparation for a rehearsal – literally getting the instrument warmed up and getting prepared to play. A daily routine, on the other hand, is a set of activities designed to cultivate and maintain your fundamental skills.” I couldn’t have said it better. David Rejano said much the same thing at Trombone Day in 2018. Arnold Jacobs has said, “Those of us in the professional sense rarely cool off enough that we would require a massive stage of warm up.” And again, “You don’t need to warm up. You’re playing five hours a day. The embouchure is just meat; there’s blood flowing through it all the time. What you do need is a maintenance routine.” I agree! You do NEED a daily fundamentals routine!
My routine is neither the only nor the “best” routine; there are many. But it has worked to help me recover from dystonia and helps my students develop. Your mileage may vary.
REST IS VITAL! See Too Much Practice.