I often talk about the importance of playing and jamming along to music in my practice. Whether it’s songs with vocals or just backing tracks, it provides a vast training ground for improving both musicianship and technical skills. The best part is that we can enjoy the process. Without even realizing it, we are absorbing a ton of important musical details. When I play along to a track, I inevitably develop my ear by continuously absorbing details such as a sense of time and rhythm, how chord changes sound, recognizing arrangement patterns like intros, verses, choruses, and more, how other instruments interact, including where and how they play throughout a song, pitch, harmony…and the list goes on. This is not the be-all and end-all of practice, but it is a crucial component for me. Numerous things slowly make their way into my brain as I do this. It’s through jamming that I learn to interact with the music as a whole, the individual instruments, and the song’s structure. I can’t stress how hugely important that skill is to develop! If you have the time and the desire to learn music theory at the same time as you’re doing what I suggest, do it. It will serve you very well — long term. Just keep in mind, everything I do, and that I’m able to do, was learned and played without any of that knowledge.

The ability to interact really well in a song and when playing with other musicians is…