DanielB said

EricBluegrassFiddle said

...For me it takes the better part of 10 minutes just to warm up and if I try to squeeze in a really short practice, I'll try to rush stuff to fast. I've noticed with Violin practice, you have to take your time and be focused and methodical. I suppose that as I get better and more consistent, I'll be able to warm up and play well in shorter time than before..

Personally, I think about 10 min is a good amount of time to warm up.  Even on instruments I've played considerably longer than violin, I take about that long. 

For violin, my usual "warm-up" is 5 min of open string bowing and then I run a very simple exercise I do with just one octave of a scale in a range that is "of interest" (meaning the scale a piece I will be working on is from, and picking the octave to be an octave I will be using heavily for that bit), up and down at a moderately fast tempo and playing the root and octave as a "doublestop" 4 times at top and bottom over and over for 5 minutes, to give the hands, wrists, arms and shoulders enough work to start to feel warm as circulation gets going well to the muscles and joints.

Then if I play something simple, I probably won't be too disappointed.  If I dig into more scales and bowing exercises, they tend to go better than if I hadn't warmed up.  I have found that doing something simple to warm up for the first 10 minutes (coincidentally) of practice or before playing seems to be pretty critical as a success factor, at least for me personally.  I don't know as trying to actually shorten the warm-up time would actually be "progress" or of benefit.  Professional athletes don't do their sport without warming up, and won't usually cut it short beyond a certain point. 

A while back, I ran across an interview with Ginger Baker (an old rock drummer that some of you might be old enough to remember) and that guy has been playing amazingly for decades.  Or at least he had at the time of the interview, I don't know how he's doing at present.  When asked about practice and warmup, he showed how he starts with a fairly simple fast snare beat, and keeps it going for... 10 minutes.  Then if there's time he'll move more into complex patterns and etc, but if he had to, he could go straight into a recording session or performance if he has at least that 10 minutes. 

With violin, I recall a vid where Itzhak Perlman was talking to a class and one of the students asked if he would please play a little something for them.. He said "But.. but.. I haven't warmed up yet!" He and they laughed, but I am not so sure he was joking so much as making a point.

Just saying Eric, I think you are on the right track with that 10 min of warm-up.  Shortening it may not be a goal you really want to try for.   If I only had 15 min to practice on a given day, I would still spend about 10 min warming up, because experience tells me that I'll be happier with how the remaining 5 min will go if I do than I might be if I just played or went into more difficult things for the whole 15 min instead.

Life gives us what it gives us on any particular day, and sometimes 15 min may be all we get.  If it is all we have and we do it, it still beats the snot out of "nothing".  When we get more.. Ooooo.  GOOD day.  LOL

Yeah, honestly, the longer I stick to a good solid warm up, the better a practice I have and "successful" like you mentioned..... 

I also discovered...it's a good idea to "tune" LOL the fiddle before each practice. But, I get lazy sometimes and even though it might be a hair sharp or flat, 1 or 2 strings...I let it slide. I shouldn't though, because then I'll start to practice and I'll go "Why did everything sound so weird?"  "What's up with the B scale, sounds funky?"...then it's like the light bulb goes off "OHHH" yup...shoulda tuned up" then I'll tune up and it's liker "WOWWWW" what was I missing" hahhahaa!!!

I can get lazy sometimes....I just wanna grab it and go. But alas Fiddle is such a high maintenance instrument, so fickle LOL...

Jim Dunleavy said
I'm currently working on improving my bowing - in particular using my wrist and elbow more and shoulder less. It's gradually getting there and now I realise it's easier when you do it the right way!

I think I'm going to post a critique video soon to see if I actually am doing it right.

That's some good stuff to be working on....it's easier said than learned. I spent the better part of the first year of learning Violin on this....and I'm still hammering away at it. I'm looser than I was when I first started but I still haven't quite achieved the looseness and flexibility that I want quite yet.

In my opinion the bowing is like 80% of the whole enchalada LOL

It's not just elbow and wrist though....it's also the fingers. The fingers need to flex and loosen up as well....it's the mechanics of the whole thing from the elbow on down to the wrist and then also loose fingers....all working together.