A few mentions of "noodling" here...
haha....i was the king of the noodle once....just twiddling my fingers, sticking to scale notes, and more or less, hoping for the best.
Then when i was about 17, in my 1st year of my music degree, i had a teacher that basically said "*** .....why are you playing what you're playing" "are you feeling that ....is that YOU playing those notes ....or are you just noodling" ......me: uhm
So anyway, thats when i learnt the importance of strong rhythmic ideas. I was already rhytmically strong in my pocket playing at that stage, but i had never really applied those concepts into my jazz soloing, mainly because i didnt know i had to. I was to busy trying to play a lot of notes, and strong(and i mean STRONG) rhythm never really crossed my mind. I had always heard the same old "B.B king can make one note, sound as good as 1000 notes", but i always took it with a grain of salt, thinking "yea, whatever". But its true. If you were to just pick two notes, E, and F, and play them with heart, STRONG rhtythm, anticipaton, and the required tone, i guarantee you will go "wow ...im really playin"
I think the most important thing you can do at this stage is anticipate the rhythms you are wanting to play in your next phrase, in your head, before you play them. Fair enough that being able to melodically anticipate your phrases may be a little out of reach at this stage. But if you can hear the rhythms before you play them, then you are well on your way.
A good thing to do, is to sing the phrases as you're playing them. Even if the notes coming out of your mouth sound NOTHING like the notes coming off of your fretboard, atleast you will be getting a taste of the concept of melodic/rhythmic anticipation. Remember, it mighten matter if you're singing out of tune, but make sure you are nailing the rhythms confidently and precisely.
It may be a good idea to just start off with three notes. The 2nd the b3rd and the 4th. Start off by not using too much complex syncopation, and just focus on being confident and precise about where you are wanting each note to land on the beat. SING the rhythms as you play them. Also, try using melodic tools like slides, etc to really get that modal tone that is synonomous with this style of music.
I cant recommend running scales in this case. Modal music is so much more about subtle, sweet melody nailed strongly and precisely, than it is about running up and down the modes.
Another thing that may help, is to remember that modal music isnt vertically stacked music like almost every other form of popular music. You see alot of these tunes written out using chord symbols like "dmi7" etc, which is wrong. Modal music is about tonality, not chords. Its about 16 bars of D dorian, NOT 16 bars of Dmi7. If you ever get to study modal voicings you will see that guys like bill evans will just about NEVER voice a chord D, F, G, Bb, E, preferring to just stack a whole bunch of 4ths that lie within the dorian mode(or which ever mode it may be in) and move them around the keyboard. like, D, G, C, F, A ......E, A, D, G, B. ....etc
So basically what this is saying, is dont approach chord tones in the traditional sence. Dont think "ive gotta hit the b7 because its a Dmin 7" ........you should be aiming for the more abstract tones within the mode, like the 2nd, the 6th, and to a lesser extent the 4th. The reason im not referring to them as 9ths, 13ths and 11ths is because modal musical is a linear style of music, not a vertically chord stacked traditional pop style.
Sorry about the novel. Hope this helps a bit ...didnt mean to ramble on that long
