Performance Tip: A jam session is not…

A jam session is not…
1) all about you.
2) a place to play your most polished piece (it's an opportunity to play new material—test it out and change it over time).
3) a time to get upset if you mess up (or didn’t play up to your expectations). It's a jam session—you have a 50% chance of walking away okay with what you just played and 50% chance of wanting to throw your harp away (though depressing, you learn more from the jams that go bad). Keep in mind that a jam session is a dynamic situation with strong and weak players backing you—each musician having different goals in mind. Roll with it and understand that the nature of a jam session is chaos. If you understand this, you'll go home with much less stress.