Thomas J. West Music

For performing ensemble classes that meet five days a week, here is a great tip that helps add variety to your routine and builds the ensemble members' musicianship at the same time: make every Friday "Jam Session Day."

For jazz bands, this means taking a break from the big band arrangements and reading charts from an Aebersold book. I recommend Volume 54: Maiden Voyage for first-timers. If they play jazz music, they should have experience with playing easy standards. You can teach them a lot with these simple tunes, including the non-verbal communication involved in playing in a combo. Once over the initial hurdle of having to improvise students love to "jam" because it doesn't feel like rehearsing. To get them over that initial hurdle, check out Teaching Jazz Improvisation To The Absolute Beginner.

For "legit" instrumental ensembles (concert band and string orchestra), Jam Session Fridays can be simple pentatonic scale improvisations over some block chords, or it can be sight-reading. Taking a page out of the military band playbook, concert bands and orchestras can have a half-dozen or so pieces in their folder in addition to their concert repertoire that can be pulled out and read through without rehearsing. Conversely, you could hand out and collect parts each Friday to give them a true sight-reading experience. This develops a whole set of skills that they often don't get, forcing them to become more independent readers and emphasizing tonal literacy (scale and pattern fluency).

For vocal ensembles, learning an easy song by rote or sight-reading repertoire can serve well for Jam Session Fridays. There are so many great doo wop tunes with simple homophonic background parts that can be taught in about 10 minutes. Provide the lyrics on a sheet for soloist volunteers, or sing the lead yourself, and you've got yourself an instant doo wop choir. Students get really excited about learning an entire song in about 30 minutes. Another possibility is to expose your classical vocalists to some vocal jazz. Play them examples of Ella, Billy, Manhattan Transfer, New York Voices, and so on. Then, put on an Aebersold accompaniment, teach the head of a standard, and jam.

My students always looked forward to Jam Session Fridays because it was a break in the monotonous routine of  "rehearsing" music. They really like being able to perform a "finished product" in only one sitting, esecially when their skills develop a bit and it starts to sound like "real music" rather than just "winging it".

As a teacher, I always looked forward to Jam Session Fridays as well because it was a relatively stress-free way to end a long week, plus I often got to perform with the students rather than being on the podium.

If you give the Jam Sessions Friday a try, be sure to share your experiences with me.

This article (c) 2011 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.

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