Five Tips for Surviving Your Next Jam Session

Jam sessions can be a fun way to meet new musicians and grow as a player. They help you work on improvisation, hone your techniques and develop your intuition when working in a group.

But they can also be intimidating and scary, especially if you haven’t played with any of the other musicians before. You can’t just show up and plug in; you need to be prepared mentally, know a fair number of tunes and stay alert to the dynamics of the group situation.

In this video, bass instructor Scott Devine offers five practical tips to help you survive a jam session and get called back for the next one.

Take a look, and visit Scott’s YouTube channel for more of his informative videos and check out his website for other free resources.

Christopher Scapelliti

Christopher Scapelliti is editor-in-chief of Guitar Player magazine, the world’s longest-running guitar magazine, founded in 1967. In his extensive career, he has authored in-depth interviews with such guitarists as Pete Townshend, Slash, Billy Corgan, Jack White, Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren, and audio professionals including Beatles engineers Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott. He is the co-author of Guitar Aficionado: The Collections: The Most Famous, Rare, and Valuable Guitars in the World, a founding editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine, and a former editor with Guitar WorldGuitar for the Practicing Musician and Maximum Guitar. Apart from guitars, he maintains a collection of more than 30 vintage analog synthesizers.