40 Jazz Standards Worth Knowing Before You Walk Into a Jam Session

This article is written by Toru Hoshino, a jazz bassist and instructor based in Japan who teaches online lessons to students worldwide. In this article, he shares 40 jazz standards that have personally come up again and again at sessions over the years — useful both as a practice checklist and as a listening list.

Here are 40 tunes that, in my own experience playing sessions over the past several years, have come up especially often. Even if you’re not a player and just want to get into the music, listening through this list is a great way to deepen your appreciation for jazz.

40 Jazz Standards (Tunes I’ve Personally Played a Lot at Sessions)

This list draws from a well-known jazz fake book widely used at sessions, covering a set of enduring standards.

Note: this is purely a personal list, based on my own experience.

Tips for Practicing to Get Session-Ready

Get the Melody to Where You Can Hum It

The “melody” here means the tune’s main theme — for “Autumn Leaves,” that’s the opening “G, A, B♭, E♭…” line.

Being able to actually play the melody is ideal, but being able to hum it means you actually have the tune memorized. Knowing a tune well reduces your odds of getting lost while improvising.

Get to Where You Can Build a Walking Bass Line Just by Looking at the Chords

Being able to build a walking bass line just from reading the chord symbols is genuinely important. That said, it’s tough when you’re starting out — that’s exactly the kind of thing this site covers in depth, so feel free to dig into other articles here on how to construct walking bass lines and improvise on bass.

Get Comfortable Playing Along With a Real Recording

Once you can build a walking bass line just by reading the chords, try playing along with an actual recording. A practice app like iReal Pro is a great tool for this.

How Many Tunes Do You Need to Know Before Going to a Jam Session?

I get asked this a lot — “how many tunes do I need to know before I can go to a jam session?” Honestly, there’s no clean cutoff here. There’s no rule like “5 tunes and you’re good to go, but 4 and you’re not ready.”

When I was starting out, I couldn’t quickly build a bass line just by looking at chords either. But my mindset was basically “just go for it” — I crammed one full chorus of a walking bass line for “Autumn Leaves” and one for an F blues into my head, and went to a session with just that.

Honestly, it was pretty terrifying. I used to think “I’ll go once I know 10 tunes,” but if you keep chasing that bar, there’s no end to it — and even if you can barely play anything, you get more out of actually showing up and feeling the room’s energy and flow firsthand than you’d ever get from more solo practice.

So even with a small repertoire, I think the moment you think “maybe I’ll just go for it now” is exactly the right moment to go. Hopefully this is useful if you’re thinking about checking out a session soon.

Knowing the chords is one thing — actually hearing whether your walking bass line holds up against a real rhythm section is exactly where a teacher’s ear catches what you can’t hear on your own.

Want Personalized Feedback on Your Playing?

This is exactly the kind of thing that’s hard to fix alone — and where having a teacher makes all the difference.

At Line on Bass, I offer an online lesson service where you send me a video of your playing, and I give you specific, detailed feedback — every single day if you want.

Students from around the world are using this to fix exactly these kinds of issues and steadily improve their jazz bass skills.

Check Out the Lesson Service →