Frank-- busy, me too, pastor's household in Lent, and so on.

To respond to your fresh question, I think that would all depend on the topic of the workshop and the musicianship/ability of the people in it. I certainly would not expect it, but I would be happy to notice it occurring, and toward the end of the workshop period I would expect to see it more than at the start. It's an outcome of the workshop going well.

I think you would expect to deliberately foster what you describe about listening, etc., in a workshop about how to jam, but I think in other kinds of topics people would be focused on responding musically to what is being presented by the presenter...

Now, the one I am remembering was one of people with mixed skill levels and mixed inherent musicianship, and mixed ages, too, 4 - 70. I saw there the same thing I saw in the 100+ workshop I attended and referenced above, and both were about doing fiddle tunes. In each one, we worked through a series of tunes, starting with easier ones first. Each time, the tune started out slow and ragged and all instruments going for broke on just getting the tune and the swing. Each player's focus was internal. As the repeats progressed, more and more players hooked up into hearing and playing with each other. After "enough" repeats the whole group hit the "groove" and there was sheer joy till everyone had done every variation of their own playing that they could think of, with a few people notably taking a prominent role. Since these tunes are played in unison, so there were no solos, but rather you could see people look up from their "staring into space" spot of total concentration, and start looking around at others while playing and sort of egging individual players on. These people would then play a little louder, dot the notes a little more daringly, and so forth... the group shook the tune like a blood-crazed terrier shaking a rat by the neck. Well, really, it's orgasmic.

That's one approach-- just letting it rip.

I have also seen a workshop led by a 14 year old fiddler working with a group of 30, in a more pedantic mode, one phrase at a time, demonstrate and play through an easy tune, and then putting it together as a whole. At the end of this the people from the concurrent guitar workshop joined them for a jam, and we started with the tune the fiddlers had been working on, and the guitarist instinctively let the fiddlers (many of them young kids from one very musical family) set the volume. I mean, we rhythm players had to tone it down or we'd have drowned the kids out and lost the tune. It was sweet and very delicate and lovely. None of that "aren't they cute" stuff-- real respect player to player.

I think that how a workshop functions depends on the leader's way of conducting it, and that's part of their job. The job of the participants is to cooperate with the leader's method and let them lead it.

I have had great effect by explaining to new jammers that they do have to take a turn leading a tune, but they should not worry that anyone present will actually be listening to how well they play or sing it. This is because people at a jam are working on extending their own musicianship and technical skills, and therefore they will be listening to THEMSELVES, not the song leader, and everyone present will be doing this until they all "get" the tune, and then they will be listening to each other, not the leader who started it all off. ("Oh, sorry, did you think they were actually listening to YOU? :~) They ain't!") The job of leading a tune is really just to make the melody and rhythm clear enough that people can get it and tinker up their playing to play it. Even a bad player can get enough across for the structure of the piece itself to come through, if the better players honestly attempt to play it... it's a puzzle, and if it was made right to start with, it will fit itself together in the players' minds. (Folk process again.)

I think I just have an enormous trust that people WILL get whatever they need to get, if they are doing what they love. Sometimes there is no evidence of this until long after the jam-- think of it like inputting a lot of raw data, and then allowing for the fact that the brain will sort it out later. This is because our brains love orderliness, and the order of music in particular.) It may sound godawful till it sorts itself out, but it usuallly does sort itself out if you really trust this inner musicalness human beans are wired with.

There are ways I think about this that touch on my spiritual orientation, and that would be another whole thing to write about.

~Susan