The other day I went to my first jazz jam session, and I wasn’t expecting much from myself because it was my first time, but it was an ice-breaking experience from which I’ve learned quite a lot about the world of jazz.
The first thing I learned was that you have to know the “standards” which are basically songs that are really old and have been covered tons of times, and the ‘real book’ is a very handy book because it’s full of very famous and well known standards, and it’s got the melodies and chord progressions written in a very clear way.
Another thing to bear in mind is that, when jazz people talk about blues, it isn’t a typical I, IV, V progression, it has some variations that I didn’t know about before. But I still did a guitar solo, even though I couldn’t play all the chords.
I didn’t play much because I didn’t know the standards, but the drummer gave me a list of songs that they normally play in that jam, so hopefully, the next time will be much better, once I learn the standards he gave me.