20 “Mini-Jams”
When having a jam session, for those in the beginning stages of jamming, perhaps the easiest or most comfortable type of music to jam to is either blues or rock, mostly for the simplistic chord progressions, scales, and rhythm patterns used.
The 12-bar blues is a good example of this.
The guitarist can play just three different chords in the rhythm part and only has to know one scale (pentatonic or blues) for playing a lead part.
The bassist can outline the chord tones in just three chords and also only has to know one scale (pentatonic or blues) for playing a lead part.
The drummer only has to know a swing or shuffle pattern and have a couple fills down, which can be incorporated into playing a lead part.
When you’re comfortable with jamming to one particular style – like blues or rock, with one particular set of changes and patterns – you will be ready to move on to more varieties of jamming. Below is a link to 20 “mini-jams” that consist of various chord progressions, covering multiple styles of music, generally ranging from 2 to 4 bars in length (with 8 repeats) or 8 bars (with 4 repeats). The title of each jam represents the style of music that can be played with the changes. In addition to new chord changes, each jam lists suggested scales that can be played into the lead parts. These will come in handy for the bassist and guitarist. The drummer can refer to the title of the jam to determine which style to play and can read along through the changes to know where they’re at in the music, which helps with determining where to place fills.
There are 4 pages of these “mini-jams”, here is the link (click here). It requires a password, which is available in our forums (click here).
You might find some of the jams to be a lot of fun, perhaps a little cheesy in some cases, though for the most part they serve as a great educational outlet for developing an understanding of jamming. You will also find that – as you go through these, and more in the future – the concept of jamming is directly associated with any other music playing, regardless of style or genre of music, as it is a means of playing through an entire “song” or “piece of music”.
Here is a list of the mini-jams’ titles:
- Heavenly Ballad
- Medium Rock
- Wall of Fame
- Wild and Crazy
- Full Deck Shuffle
- Generic Pop
- Funky Feeling
- Don’t Stop
- Smooth Jazz
- Overtime
- Nashville Dreamin’
- Heavy Rock
- Alley Cat
- Fusion
- South of the Border
- Scare Us
- Swing It!
- Metal Mix
- Rock ‘n’ Roll
- Outta Here
If you would like to go through any or all of these, print out the PDF that I uploaded and bring them to our lessons. It should be fun! (The PDF combines all 4 pages so they should be easy to print.)