jamming?

[unownunown]

so i'm in college and i play bass. needless to say everyone needs a bassist and i get invited to jam with people all the fucking time. i've never really jammed, and when i play with people it's usually at least loosely based off of sheet music. but i'm pretty sure that's not what people want to do here so i'm just confused.

this is embarassing. what does this mean really? i play a cool riff and then play closely related riffs until we get bored or some music happens? i dunno. mostly dudes into punk music wanna play and i don't even fuck with punk but it would be cool to play with more people.

[Holy Schnikes]

i play a cool riff and then play closely related riffs until we get bored or some music happens? i dunno.

Pretty much what you said here. Like "check this riff out" and you do and add to it kind of thing, or vice versa.

Obviously it will changed based on who your "jamming" with and the skill levels involved and whatever else, everyone creates music differently. I can tell you one thing though, sheet music will most definitely not be involved in most "jam" sessions.

[nieh]

Whenever I jam with my friends we either play acoustic or electric. Acoustic usually starts with a chord progression then various riffs on other random instruments. Electric we usually play riff and the person drumming starts playing along. we've gone for hours straight just jamming. usually ends up turning into noise music.

[jrmy]

Yep, either shared rifting, or starting out on covers that you both know and going from there.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Yeah, pretty much, starting out with a riff and then slowly changing it/making up different sections as you go along is really fun, as is taking a cover and changing it around a bit. Depends on the skill of the musicians/how well you know them as to how well it goes. These guys I'm in a band with are great musicians and we can all pick up a chord progression/riff pretty quickly by ear, and we know everyone's "style" really well, so jams get pretty awesome sometimes. But I've jammed with other people where you just can't get out of this one riff/chord progression because nobody does anything else or can follow things well. Sometimes jamming on one chord progression for ages and just throwing in little changes/going mental can be the best thing ever though. I mean just look at Neil Young & Crazy Horse, those guys could make a 2 chord jam last for 10 minutes and still be amazing.

[wsas3]

Some good tips here

[01010111]

I agree with everything said so far. In my experience if sheet music is involved when "jamming" that's a bad sign.

For more fun when jamming, if you can read/communicate some non-verbal signals for changes, then things can get really interesting. Normally you can't communicate more than lets change to something else and when, so when the change comes everybody does something different leading to some interesting combinations of rhythms and playing styles. I've only played with one group that could do this and it was amazing; as long as everyone kept the same tempo and key it worked great.

[Gearmond]

this reminds me that for some reason, no one wants bassists on campus ._.

[Adoom]

With the Gloom, one of us will write some music and then we'll just go to town on it until it's a song, just playing parts for a long time, taking private notes as to what we like to do, then deciding length etc. Or we just straight improvise until we have some idea of what we want to do, then refer back to the above.

Half of our music is improvised new every time we play it, and nothing's really set in stone, even with older songs.

Communication is important. Eye contact and stuff.

I'm not above yelling or something either. Just a big "OI!" and then folks know we're moving on. Conor has gotten quite good at signaling with his fingers how many more bars he's going to do before we change whilst we're playing.

If improvising, we set a tempo and a mood and work from there.

[O Drones]

My current band is all improv jams. Someone has a riff and the entire jam is generally built around that riff's key. Tempo changes are initiated by someone and hopefully everyone is on the same page and cottons onto that feeling. A lot of it is based on feel.

[snipelfritz]

Some people can jam. Some can't. It has nothing to do with skill, only approach. I know a guy who's a great guitarist and writes awesome songs(if you're into relatively generic hard-rockish stuff), but he can only play things he's written before and can only tell you other parts he's written for that song. He can't give you a key and you're best off just watching his fingers to figure out what to play with him.

I improvise almost exclusively. I spent two years with a group of housemates who would jam all the time. We never wrote anything. We'd typically just start with a key and roll with it. However, most of our music turned into the same blues-rock jam. We never played outside of our basement.

Finding a middle ground is important Being able to communicate and be productive both while you're playing and (possibly more importantly) while your aren't playing is crucial. That said sometimes mindless musical masturbation is fun and can help you grow as a musician individually and even more rarely you might come up with some usable ideas. You just need to know when to stop playing and start talking things out turning them into actual song.

[jfrey]

I can like jam with myself if I have a basic idea first. I can't jam to other peoples stuff though.

[theavondon]

Yup. Jamming is basically just kinda...playing. So, just play. Don't overthink it. Play stuff. Lots of stuff. Trust me, the only bad thing you could do is to be too apprehensive to play anything. Even someone that's bad at jamming is not too bad if they just fucking play.

Then again, the only times I'm ever really having fun jamming is with people I'm comfortable with personally. It's a sorta personal connection, like, "Hey man, you'll follow me on this one, and then it's your turn to come up with something you think I can't play on the spot, and it'll be fun, yeah".

Also, I wish jamming wasn't so linked to being a hippie douchebag.

[D.o.S.]

Depends on the kind of jamming. There's Phish style jamming, then there's Earthless style jamming, if you're looking at it on an axis, it basically swings from evolving repetition to intense simultaneous improvisation.

[Achtane]

Yup. Jamming is basically just kinda...playing. So, just play. Don't overthink it. Play stuff. Lots of stuff. Trust me, the only bad thing you could do is to be too apprehensive to play anything. Even someone that's bad at jamming is not too bad if they just fucking play.

I'm going to take this advice and run with it. I've only noodled a little with my treblestick-playing friend and I'm always intimidated. It's stupid to be intimidated.