LJS 95: 10 Tips for Successful Jazz Gigs and Jam Sessions

Welcome to episode 95 of the LJS Podcast where today we are walking through 10 important tips for playing successful jazz gigs and jam sessions. At the end of the day, the end goal for our practicing and honing our craft is to get out there and play. These tips will help set up you and the other musicians you are playing with for success.  Listen in!
Listen to episode 95







It's January 1st, 2018, a brand new year, and every time a new year comes we hopefully jump into it full of motivation and excitement for a fresh start.
When I was planning for what topic to do for our first episode of 2018, I was coming off of a long month (December) of holiday party gigs and casuals. Though as a professional musician I gig quite often, the welcomed increase in gigs had this fresh on my mind.
What better way to kick off the new year than talk about actually getting out there and playing with other musicians.
Today's episode hones in on 10 important tips for successful jazz gigs and jam sessions. These are all things that I have observed and experienced having played hundreds and hundreds of gigs throughout my career.
I truly believe that if you and the other musicians you are playing with are following these principles, some pretty incredibly musical moments will be allowed to come to life.
Here are the 10 tips I talk about today. Be sure to listen in to the episode where I go deeper into each.
10 Tips:
1. Know the repertoire
2. Listen first, play second
3. Take the focus off of yourself and serve the music
4. Show up with your homework done
5. Be your own timekeeper
6. Spread positive vibes only
7. Know your role in the band or the musical context
8. Leave competition at the door
9. Don't overplay- say your part and pass the baton
10. Reflect- what should you work on for next time?
If you aren't playing gigs or going to jam sessions yet, make it one of your goals to start doing so this year. If you are doing these things, make a point to engage even more.







Read the Transcript
Brent: Alright, what's up everybody? My name is Brent, I am the jazz musician behind the website learnjazzstandards.com, which is a blog and a podcast all geared towards helping you become a better jazz musician.
Welcome and happy new year, if you're listening today, which is January 1st, 2018. Special happy new year whether you're listening a little later in the week because you were partying on New Years day, welcome, really excited to just launch a new year and to have you as a listener on the podcast and if you didn't listen to episode 94, last episode, I talk about how I'm gonna be setting up my 2018 for a successful music year.
I talked a little bit about my successes and some of my failures, I do hope you go back and listen to that episode if you haven't yet. Whenever we talk about the new year and resolutions and goals, all those things are really important for our success and our case, our musical success. Our success with becoming better jazz musicians. Be sure to listen back to that one.
While I was thinking about what would be a great podcast episode to launch 2018, I thought to myself, what better way to start than to talk about actually playing music, going out there and playing. 'Cause you know what, why at the end of the day do we spend all the time that we do in the practice room, working hard, working on our technique, working on learning jazz language, working on learning repertoire, why do we do it.
The end goal and hopefully, you are doing a little bit of this already, is to actually go out there and play. To play gigs or even to go out and play jam sessions. I've been playing a lot of gigs lately, I am a professional musician so I do play a lot of gigs in gen...