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A jam session is a relatively informal musical event, process, or activity where musicians, typically instrumentalists, play improvised solos and vamp over tunes, drones, songs, and chord progressions. To "jam" is to improvise music without extensive preparation or predefined arrangements.
The term can refer to both a technique—employed by any musician in any genre—and as a recognizable genre of experimental music in its own right. Free improvisation, as a genre of music, developed primarily in the U.K. as well as the U.S. and Europe in the mid to late 1960s, largely as an outgrowth of free jazz and contemporary classical music.
Musical improvisation (also known as musical extemporization) is the creative activity of immediate ("in the moment") musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians. [1]
Free jazz, or free form in the early to mid-1970s, [1] is a style of avant-garde jazz or an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes.
A jazz singer, for example, might use attendance and participation in jam sessions as a way to find potential members who she could hire as a rhythm section for her shows. A bandleader might use participation in jam sessions as a way to scout out new talent for her big band. In jazz, jam sessions are also an opportunity for informal learning ...
The term side-slipping or side-stepping has been used to describe several similar yet distinct methods of playing outside. In one version, one plays only the five "'wrong'" non-scale notes for the given chord and none of the seven scale or three to four chord tones, given that there are twelve notes in the equal tempered scale and heptatonic scales are generally used. [3]
In jazz, when one instrumentalist or singer is doing a solo, the other ensemble members play accompaniment parts. While fully written-out accompaniment parts are used in large jazz ensembles, such as big bands, in small groups (e.g., jazz quartet, piano trio, organ trio, etc.), the rhythm section members typically improvise their accompaniment parts, an activity called comping.
The following is a list of notable jam bands, or bands on the jam-band circuit. Jam band performances often feature extended musical improvisation (" jams ") over rhythmic grooves and chord patterns , and long sets of music that cross genre boundaries.