TrueFire – Jam Night Volume 3 with Andy Aledort (2015)

For many musicians, going out to the local jam and playing with friends is their primary, if not only musical outlet. The goal of Andy Aledort’s Jam Night series is to broaden your skills as both a rhythm guitarist and soloist, with specific instruction directed within the scope of standard, tried-and-true open jam night songs.

Each volume of the series includes 10 of the most popular songs played at open jams, all over the world on a nightly basis. The Jam Night series will help you develop both your rhythm guitar and soloing chops while teaching you a variety of ways to navigate through popular music’s most common song progressions and stylings.

“I own all of the videos in Andy’s Jam Night series. Learning two rhythm and two leads for each song was groundbreaking for me as it really opened up the possibilities of guitar arrangement for me. It’s also a joy to learn full songs and rhythms and leads and play along to the jam tracks. Really enjoy Andy as a teacher and his style.” – Tom Sweet, TrueFire Student

“In every edition of the jam night series, we’re going to look at 10 chord progressions that are based on songs that are the most popular songs played at open jams all over the world, on a nightly basis.”

My goal is to give you all the tools you need, so that you’ll walk into that environment feeling confident, knowing that you can get up there stand there with the best of them and have at your disposal a variety of techniques for playing interesting rhythm parts, as well as expressing yourself through a variety of techniques for soloing.”

Jam Night: Volume 3 features 10 new series of lessons, each themed to a popular progression used in a popular jam tune, and each series teaching two rhythm approaches and two approaches for soloing and improvisation over that progression.

The 10 progressions and grooves are patterned after the Beatles’ While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Come Together, Steve Cropper’s work on Hard to Handle, Bad Company’s Can’t Get Enough, Muddy Waters’ Hoochie Coochie Man, T-Bone Walker’s immortal classic Stormy Monday ala The Allman Brothers, Allman’s cover version of Junior Wells’ blues classic You Don’t Love Me, Rolling Stones’ Wild Horses, Grateful Dead’s Casey Jones and Goin’ Down the Road.

Working with Andy’s Jam Night series will equip you with the three most important skills you’ll need to take to the jam stage; command of the popular song list, a diverse rhythm guitar vocabulary, and the ability to improvise fresh solos over popular song progressions.

Command of the Popular Song List: There are really only a handful of songs that are called over and over again at the local jams — they’re the ‘standards’ of rock and popular music. You don’t need to learn them note-for-note like you would for a cover, but you do need to be familiar with their basic structure.

Diverse Rhythm Guitar Vocabulary: You’ll be playing a lot of rhythm guitar at the jams. The better your rhythm chops, the more you’ll get asked to the stage because EVERYBODY loves to play with a strong rhythm section. Again, while your rhythm parts might be inspired by the original recorded version — you MUST bring some originality and diversity to the bandstand to keep things interesting over what could be a 15-minute jam on that song.

Improvising Over Popular Progressions: Jam songs are selected because they’re familiar to players and audiences alike, AND they provide an interesting and very jam-friendly progression to play over. Your blues chops will certainly be helpful BUT they won’t take you all the way there. You MUST be able to navigate your improvisations through a variety of other 3- and 4-chord progressions.

For each of these 10 popular jams, Andy will first overview the vibe, structure and progression of the tune. He’ll then demonstrate and breakdown two rhythm guitar approaches, and then two lead guitar approaches — 20 rhythm approaches and 20 lead approaches in all.

Everything is tabbed and notated, plus you’ll get all of the rhythm tracks to work with on your own.