This is timely for me because I was actually pondering this before you posted so I'm glad you gave me a springboard to give some thoughts on where I feel I am right now. I like to run modes (diatonic intervals) to reinforce patterns and the sounds associated with them. Also I felt it instantly gave me a way to play more of the right notes as opposed to aimless noodling which to me is actually detrimental musically. One thing I quickly noticed was that melodic phrases began flowing without trying. Mostly these come from mostly sequential intervals ascending and descending. Close intervals. This accords with what I heard in that masterclass that was posted elsewhere. The ear is (or was) conditioned to expect certain things.
Little wonder to me then that the little pieces of melody that jump out are almost always from something written in '40s and '50s and many times they were written for a Broadway show or a movie. What has been come to be called the Great American Songbook. I only know a comparatively finite amount of this music, so it's not really like I have it on the brain all the time. I came of age musically in the '70s.
Therefore the same small repertoire of mine keeps cropping up. Today it was "You Belong To Me" Jo Stafford version 1952 again. I found myself wanting to share this with whomever might care, but I feel silly referencing such an old (and potentially stodgy) old tune to the OP since I don't recall his musical tastes.
Yet this is the same reason we still can't get away from Autumn Leaves, All The Things You Are, and I Got rhythm whenever topics like these lead us to ever more sophisticated uses of modes, scales, chords, and progressions. I imagine it is the same reason educators like Carol Kaye and more recently Jeff Berlin declare that Jazz is the best way to teach music. And of that music, standards of the kind I described continue to be the touchstone for that.
Now just to make it about me again, I will confess that it occurred to me that the reason I will get deep into the weeds on modes and theory is that (besides finding it interesting in itself) it compensates for my lack of knowledge of songs to which all of this would best apply. I may not be alone in this. I notice a distinct lack of application to actual tunes in these discussions.
This mainly applies to jazz, but as you already know, there's a certain amount of initial groundwork you have to do, i.e. learning to manipulate the major scale, and it's accompanying pentatonics and arpeggios. Then you start transcribing songs. You start easy, like Miles Davis solo from "Freddy Freeloader". Or whatever you like that you can clearly hear. You should only work on stuff that really moves you because you need to spend a LOT of time with it. Well past the point where you think you have got it. But stuff in the Jazz Blues form is familiar enough that if you are interested in jazz, you should have heard it a lot. One mistake people kind of make when approaching jazz is they start out with things that are too hard for them.
One common theme I hear repeated constantly by people like Mike Stern, John Patticucci, Michael Breaker, Janek Gwizdala and others, is that they transcribed literally hundreds (if not thousands) of snippets of solos, phrases etc and repeated them hundreds of times. The point being is that repetition is the way to get at increasing your vocabulary within the music. The scales, chord tones, and all that stuff is only the basis for your music. It's not music in and of itself. Learning the heads to a bunch of standards and be-bop tunes is good. Anything that goes into copying the works of the Masters is good, no matter how simple the idea is. The point here isn't to really try to play the solo note for note, whey you do play the song, but to be aware of the way the notes are connected, the phrasing and things like that. That's what you really want to copy. The notes don't matter at all, as long as they fit the changes.
For me, since I had previously worked a lot with major scale diatonic material, I started out transcribing a lot of Jimmy Haslip (Yellow Jackets) solos because his playing sounds good and is extremely diatonic to whatever key center he's in. He might play maybe one note out of the key in an entire solo. You can really see the modal shapes just pop out like puzzle pieces fitting together. Incidentally, his playing will prove instantly that it's not about playing G Mixolydian over G7. He just plays what he wants that sounds good. The modes just act as a reference shape in whatever register he chooses to play in. And for me, modes give me a way to break up my scale studies, allowing me to focus on different parts, then connecting them. Because ultimately, there are no modes. It's just one big ass scale.
Anyway, lately I've been adding to my vocabulary by working with the half/whole diminished scale and have started working on Dave Holland and John Scofield solos, specifically their solos on Norwegian Wood from Herbie Hancock's "The New Standard". I'm looking for that "outside" sound at this point. I'm by no means an expert at all when it comes to jazz and soloing, but I do understand what I have to do and how to get at it. It just takes work. Fortunately, I like putting in that seat time.
Sorry for the long winded post. This just happens to be a point in my development that I'm currently interested in.
