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 why session nerves never really go away — and why that’s completely normal.
I recently had a casual Zoom hangout with the regulars from my bebop practice group. It had been a while since I’d talked with that many bassists at once, and it was genuinely great.
During the call, one of the participants mentioned, “I want to try going to a session, but it feels like such a high bar — I get nervous just thinking about it.” One of the regulars, who plays sessions all the time, answered:
“Honestly, I still get nervous no matter how many years I’ve been doing this. But once you’ve gone about a hundred times, you start to feel like at least one of those times will go well — so at that point, it’s really just a numbers game.”
I nodded along hard to that one.
I’ve probably played somewhere around a thousand sessions myself at this point, and I still get genuinely nervous walking into one I haven’t been to before.
I’ll catch myself thinking things like, “I hope that guy over there isn’t scary… I hope he doesn’t get annoyed with me.”
So here’s the thing: no matter how much you practice, your first time at a session is always going to be nerve-wracking. At some point, you just have to work up the nerve and go.
If you’re hoping to make your session debut at some point, it helps to go in already expecting that.
Nerves like that get a lot easier once you’ve had someone walk you through what to actually expect — which is part of what a teacher is for.
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.