Principle 7: Don’t practice, just jam!
Of all musical activities, jamming is the most useful, effective and necessary way to develop essential musical abilities. These abilities include listening, self expression, rhythm, performance, improvisation, grooving and many other essential skills. Yet jamming is rarely taught.
The standard music education model is one of weekly lessons, practicing alone, technical exercises, reading music, repetition, playing only other people’s music and not having fun. This method is ineffective, slow, uninspiring, boring, stifling, and lonely. This educational model often destroys the natural love of beginning musicians for music and makes many abandon their desire to play music completely.
Jamming is the best way to learn any language, including music. It’s exactly how we easily and quickly learned our native spoken languages. We didn’t practice, we just jammed with our family and in just a few years could speak well long before we learned to read, went to any school or took any lessons. To learn our first language, we don’t recite speeches or do exercises, we have improvised conversations. Every conversation we have is an improvisation!
Jamming brings this concept to music learning. What is jamming? Jamming is playing improvised music with other people, listening, responding and fitting in with the musical group while expressing individual and group creativity.
Not only is jamming very effective and helpful, it is also very fun! It’s much more fun than any other way to learn music. Jamming is not something to do every now and then, it should be the main thing we do musically. We should jam much more than we practice, and any new technique or musical idea we develop should be incorporated into the jam as soon as we figure it out a little bit. In case I have not made myself clear yet, we should jam with other people as much as possible. Make jamming the cornerstone of your musical life and you can quickly raise your musicianship to the next level.
Exercise 7: Jam!
Now is the time to get together with another musician or, better yet multiple musicians, and play together. You can jam with anyone, pros, amateurs or beginners. It is helpful to have a bassist and percussionist, but it is possible for any combination of musicians to succeed at jamming.
For beginners I recommend the following step by step process to getting started jamming.
Step 1: Pick a key.
At first keep the harmony very simple, and pick one easy key, such as C Major or A Minor, and jam there just on that one key. You can add chord changes and more complicated harmony to your jam later but for beginners we don’t want a lot of worrying about notes, so choosing one key makes it easier for everyone to listen and focus on the groove.
Step 2: Start with a simple and repetitive bass line.
Next get your bass player or other musician with a low range instrument to start playing a bass line. Keep it simple and repetitive at first, and make sure the bass line has a strong and easy to understand groove. It can just be a few notes but made it a rock for the rest of the jam to anchor to. I suggest sticking to 4/4 time.
Step 3: Listen and enjoy the bass line.
Remember Principle 4- feel the groove before you play! With that in mind, before playing, everyone else should spend a moment and really feel the bass groove together. Move your bodies to the music. Appreciate that tasty bass line together for a while then continue.
Step 4: Add simple and repetitive percussion.
Now it is time for the drummers and percussionists to join in. Play simply and repetitively at first, and make the percussion complements the bass groove. Always listen to each other and the group sound. Make sure the drums and bass fit together right and the resulting groove sounds and feels good. In most rock, jazz, and pop the bass plays on beat 1 and 3, and the drums on 2 and 4. I suggest that you use this as the default beat for a beginner jam.
Step 5: Listen to and enjoy the groove.
The rest of the musicians should continue to listen and enjoy the groove. Other musicians should move their bodies with the rhythm section and compliment the rhythm section for laying down such a solid groove to play along with.
Step 6: Add other musicians one by one while continuing to listen and feel the groove together.
Now it’s time for other musicians to enter one-by-one and play simple things that fit in well with the groove. Make sure you are solidly feeling the groove before you play. Always listen and see what the results are on the group feeling when you add your part. As each musician enters, take some time as a group to listen and appreciate the contribution of that band member.
Step 7: Once all musicians are playing, enjoy the groove together.
This is the best part, when all musicians are playing and fitting in together. Most members of the band should be focused on maintaining the groove. Soloists can also play in this stage, but they should take care to fit in with the rest of the band and not play over each other.
When you have the feeling that everything is fitting together just right, keep it going! This is when we are training our minds the most effectively. That feeling of the groove, the most magical feeling in music, is the sign that you need to look for to know that you are doing it right. Now is the time to empty your mind, let the groove come in and fill your whole consciousness. You are a musician, right now!
Step 8: Finish the jam together.
Finally, when it feels right, end the jam. Look and talk to each other, make sure everyone is paying attention, and then end the song together. Ending songs is one of the more difficult parts of performing music, and it is good to practice this from the very beginning. Just like the last few words of a conversation, if they don’t feel right, they will leave a negative impression of the entire conversation. A bad ending can have the same result for a song. What’s the best way to end a conversation? With a hug and and quick goodbye! So do the same thing musically.
Step 9: Celebrate your jam, compliment your band mates, discuss and take a short break.
Now is the time to celebrate your epic jam, thank your band mates for their contributions to the groove, and discuss excitedly what happened. Try to remember what went right and make kind constructive suggestions about how to be even better next time. You can also discuss band names and make plans for your first gig. Take a quick break for milk and cookies, or whatever your band likes to do in between jams.
Step 10: Start again with a new key, bass line, and groove.
Go back to Step 1 and start over with a different feel, key, etc. As you continue to repeat this process you can add more complexity, such as soloists, chord changes, more improvisation, etc. Keep repeating this process and watch your musicianship improve by leaps and bounds.
Common Mistakes While Jamming
There are several normal mistakes we make when amateurs try to jam. Let’s discuss the most common pitfalls.
Mistake 1: Everyone playing at the same time and not leaving space for others or not feeling the groove together.
This is a very common jam band mistake. I have heard many an amateur attempt where everyone is playing at the same time and covering each other up and it sounds like a big mess. This is akin to a conversation with everyone all talking at the same time while no one is listening.
Instead, play less. Limit soloing to one person at a time, leave space for others to play and listen to the group instead of yourself. Listen and respond to what others play.
Mistake 2: Jamming while focusing on technique and playing things that are too technical and difficult.
Jamming on things that are too difficult leads to stiff playing, losing the groove, and often one great big mess in general. This is like trying to learn to talk by having a complicated conversation about the latest discoveries in astrophysics.
Instead, keep things simple and technically conservative. If you can’t really execute something technically, simplify it. The technique will come later, but it develops much better while you are in the groove solidly rather than struggling to keep up.
Mistake 3: Playing never ending jams that go on forever with nothing really happening.
This is like a person who never knows when to stop talking. The music must end! So end the music, and make the ending an important consideration for your band. Someone may need to take charge and direct the ending, therefore appointing a bandleader with a little experience can be very helpful.
Mistake 4: Dropping the groove or fooling around while someone else is trying to groove.
As a bass player, this one drives me crazy. So many times I see a bass player or other musician trying to start a jam and laying down a good groove, only to have some other thoughtless musician pick up their instrument and crash in like a bull in a china shop by playing something totally unrelated to the original groove and destroying the entire jam.
Some of the most typical thoughtless groove-killing activities include fumbling around looking for the key with no sense of rhythm, loud rhythmless tuning, playing another song, starting the song in the wrong place, or practicing licks.
Musicians, don’t do this! It’s analogous to someone attempting to start a conversation with you while you immediately interrupt them loudly and change the subject. It’s rude in conversation and it’s rude in music.
If someone is playing, especially the bass player, the jam has already begun. That means you are already at least at step 3. That means it’s time to listen and feel the groove.
Mistake 5: Not playing with the best musicians available.
When we learn to speak, most of the people we learn from are already expert speakers. Imagine how much more difficult it would be for a baby to learn a language from other babies.
Amateur musicians make the same mistake when they limit their jamming activities to jamming with other beginners. It will work but much more slowly. Instead, play with the best musicians you can find. Don’t worry about not being good enough, just ask them to jam anyways. If you keep a solid groove and keep things simple, listen, and follow the other guidelines in this lesson the pros will not mind jamming with you. Jamming with pros will speed your music development to light speed.
Additional Resource:
Learn to Jam: 20 tips for making music with friends
The Lost Art of Classical Improvisation
