Man, that’s a fantastic memory! I woulda loved to be there to hear that. 
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I guarantee you what I remember playing and what I actually probably polar opposite 
but I know for the fact, the effect of playing with better players. Remember the old Tiger Wood commercials at the driving range, it holds some truth.
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Hey @JoshFossgreen … funny thing… Jamming… was what landed me here… and what ultimately got me to get the B2B course as well.
It was a Sunday evening last fall… near the end of the season (i’m landscaper, and only work 7 months of the year ) … there was a hella ruckus coming from one of the suites here… for fun… I wandered over.
One of my neighbors had a jam session going… at this time… I had no bass… and hadn’t played in 20+ years … I decided to bang on the door… and see what what up 
Got invited in… we had a few wobbly pops… and put my hands on a bass for the first time … in a LONG time… and was shocked how much I remembered… there was a RIDICULOUSLY good guitar player there… and he was was sayin… man you know how to follow the groove… and that was 20 years stale. 
Shortly after… I went and picked up my Jackson … and found this funny guy on Youtube who happened to have a bass course
I was in a band way back based out of Edmonton… and it was HELLA fun… we were full time, on the road… new city every week… For a working band “Jam” is something that happens during rehearsal… and where your original songs come from… and its ALWAYS fun
When we gigged, we would also host the open mics on last night of our week ( usually the Sunday nights ) … Also super fun.
Everyone learning bass… should try at some point to try to play with someone else … a drummer … guitar… anything… So fun when you just hit a groove and start exploring.
well… that was long… Oh well…
I do like Jam on toast too. LOL 
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I thought about this more and condensed my thoughts:
Jamming is the sort of practice and exploration like what Victor Wooten encourages for learning music.
Jamming is my time when I get to just explore and experiment and not worry about if what I’m doing is “right” or not (especially jamming to records). I go in with no preconceived notions of what I’m going to get out of jamming other than enjoying time with my instrument. I am invariably surprised by what I end up getting out of it.
But I always get something out of it.
Jamming is where I get to see how well I can actually play.
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This is all I ever do for practice.
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I jam alone with backing tracks. I started making backing tracks just so I could play “live” because I’m struggling to find someone to jam with.
So far, I’ve succeeded at having one jam session in person and that was with my daughter who was in for the holidays. We bought her a new guitar for Christmas and we spent an hour just playing whatever came to mind. It was amazing.
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Pretty much this! You’ve effectively said what I was going to say!
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This is the way of it these days.
For Ratatata, the metal song of the year, Babymetal and Electric Callboy went back and forth until there were like 30 versions of the song, and didn’t meet up until the morning of the video shoot, which is also when they finalized the song.
And you see this time and again.
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My buddy and I have only jammed together on the same continent once in 35 years. All our covers so far were done remotely.
More coming soon though
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I jam with a buddy who comes over once a month and at school I have kids in my room all the time, and guess what they always need? A bassist. And guess who gets to jam?
I love playing with people because it is magical when the timing comes together, it’s fun to learn new songs, and be accountable to others. It gives practice a purpose.
But I always jam at home to tracks, songs, and just plain old noodling. Noodles and Jams. Sounds like a new band name.
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Got together with a buddy tonight and did some jamming. It was the first time I’d done it on bass, and first time in a long time playing with other people. He had his 6-string bass and would play melodies over my low-end rhythms. Oh man, that was so much fun! We’re making plans to do it again soon - good thing, now I’m hooked. 
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Congrats, man. Thats the way to do it. Nothing like that same-room jamming connection.
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Or something from Chef Boyardee lol Nothing is better than playing (even if its just noodling ) with other players.
Indeed It is a blast!
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I used to enjoy playing with other folks regardless of the instrument I was playing, now not as much. I don’t like packing up my gear or traveling. If we go to a studio its charged by the hour and there is set up and tear down. The time spent learning songs that may or may not get played when I could be using that time practicing something I really need to work on or recording. The hassle of working around other peoples schedules. After years and years of “hey, I’m not gonna make it” at the last minute…who needs it.
I’d rather turn on a drum machine and work timing for a little or as long as I want and press on. They have something like an open jam here at yokosuka, which was OK when it started but they ended up with a guitar player who was adamant about playing the Clapton catalog every month (which he has down pat) but I stopped going there about a year ago and I was the one that started it.
Maybe I’ll get the bug some time late, I’m not anti social but I do put value on my time and I don’t like it wasted and jams seem to waste more time than we spend playing.
I mostly jam with my band when we wrote original songs, working up from different ideas and phrases, to a song structure, and taking the ideas as far as they’ll go.
I don’t enjoy Freeform, “fun”, directionless jamming with other musicians, though. After a while it just seems like noise to me.
And sadly no more jam on toast for me because I’m diabetic along with a whole host of other conditions.
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Oh man this reminds me of the time we did a “quick spontaneous jam” with a drummer friend.
My current bandmate (guitar, vocals) shows up with the drummer (this guy that was a party friend of ours) completely unannounced and says it’s time for us to all jam. At this point I (synths) and our other bandmate (bass, vocals) were mostly sober and things were looking good.
We start unloading the drum set and setting him up, starting with a baseboard and padding and proceeding on to the set itself. This, it turns out, is not a fast process. We also went through a half rack of beer in this process.
Fast forward 1-2 hours. The drums are finally set up in our band room and the other instruments ready to rock. I am now somewhat less than mostly sober. The bass player has, how should I put this, disappeared to entertain someone of the fairer sex. (Yes, it’s not a myth, this can happen for us bass players too.) My bandmate is not super happy with us at this point, but is also not entirely sober himself, and ffs give us some warning next time man. The drummer is bemused.
The three of us jam for about a half hour to 45 mins tops and then it’s time to start packing up his drum set again.
Yeah… I don’t really miss that part.
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I’ve just recently starting jamming with another dad at my kids school. We mostly try covers (at week 2 we can get through an entire song including the bridge). Sometimes we “jam” and improvise things. I find myself reusing the key signatures of songs we’re playing as a framework.
My difficulty is that I’m cursed and everyone I have to play music with also plays bass… so I’m on guitar in this case. It means we have to keep it pretty basic.
I also got a session at the School Of Rock adult program as a holiday gift (still cursed, our band is 1 drummer, 1 guitar, 1 keyboard, and 3 bassists) so I’ve been filling in on vocals (yikes! Is there a b2b equivalent for singing?) and guitar for some songs.
My goal picking up bass as an adult has been to play songs that people will sing along to, which requires other people to be an audience or playing with me. I do find that as much as I’m a bass student in also a student of music, musicianship, and being in a band.
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I want to get more comfortable jamming. But I am directionless. I try jamming to backing tracks, but end up repeating a simple rhythm and pattern within the box. I haven’t figured out how to be more creative in this sense. I thought once I learned more songs, that the patterns from the songs would get inside me somehow and come out when jamming. But they don’t. It’s been a request of mine that has frustrated me and a few in person bass teachers.
One idea I’ve had, but haven’t implemented, is recording it, since I think I somehow fear I am too worried about remembering/being able to replay something. But I don’t really think that’s the problem.
Another idea a teacher asked me to do was to create a bass line for Autumn Leaves - I think that was decent - as I’d try and explore what I wanted my bass line to be via jamming. But maybe was too stilted. For now, I heard a version of House of the Rising Sun by some jazz folks, and it made me think I should maybe mess around with adding notes/flourish to the bass line there. That’s my current project in the road to trying to learn how to jam…
This is one place music theory helps a lot - it gives you a framework to make it easier to understand potential things that will work with the song.
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hmm! I like this one
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