more scrittles

That Mick Goodrick book has been such a great source of ideas, I really can't recommend it enough to people who have at least some of the fundamentals of diatonic modes and harmony down. Today I got really excited about what he calls a "common-tone" approach toward playing through changes. Basically, instead of either thinking of a different mode for each chord built on the root, or thinking of the diatonic scale that a chord is part of, you figure out the relationship of each chord to the scale you're already playing. I applied this thinking to "All the Things You Are", and found it much easier to concentrate on melody - for the first stanza, you just think of Ab major through the whole thing (the same as the second approach above), but when it gets to the bV7 chord (D7), you just switch to Ab Lydian #9, moving a few notes from Ab major. At least for me, this is a lot better than suddenly throwing D altered or G harmonic minor (the key that Ab Lydian #9 is from) in there; I'd rather not think about a root change, but rather, an adjustment of the notes I have available to me. I'm planning to try this line of thinking with some other tunes, I've been playing "All the Things" to death, so I'm curious if it'll be as successful an approach with unfamiliar material.