What is a jam session?

Karaoke for instruments?

Not exactly.

Many times a place will hire a small group that will play and later in the night other musicians can sit in.  Other times musicians just get together to jam.

People come to watch, but if you play and bring your sax, then you can join in.

If you don’t play and the musicians know you, you might get heckled!

A lot of times the main thing that gets played is a set of ‘standards’ – songs that everyone knows.  In jazz those could be songs like Misty, Stella by Starlight, Sugar, etc.

Playing them in new ways is also something that happens.

So brushing up on some tunes that you could play with the other musicians can be good preparation.

Jam sessions are a great place to play with other musicians and try new things.

Here’s a jam session that happened at Berklee.