From my thoughts that I had earlier on chromatic chord substitution comes another wacky idea that I have. This new concept is called “movable arpeggios” and has helped me a lot with my soloing even though I still don’t sound quite right.
For example, from any normal arpeggio pattern, you can take the portion of the arpeggio that is on the D through the high E strings and use that arpeggio as a movable arpeggio shape. Since certain arpeggios fit with “minor” tunes and others fit best with “major” tunes, you can pick one or two different arpeggio shapes that fit the particular song and move them as the chords change in the song. Of course, when the song is on the V and begins to resolve back to the start, I usually stick in a simple little diminished pattern or a piece of harmonic minor scale.
The patterns that I am playing with at the moment are the major (Dm chord at the first position) shape, the major6, melodic minor, diminished, and the major 7th. I am still working on this idea, but it sounds interesting if you use the idea to solo to minor swing.

This is one concept that I am working with at the moment and consists of modulating my arpeggios. To accomplish this, as I play an arpeggio, I can make it sound fuller by modulating each note in the arpeggio before I play the next note in the arpeggio. More specifically, when “modulating” I am playing the notes that are either a whole or a half step above and below the arpeggio note before I actually play that note. This creates tension just before I hit each note and gives an interesting effect. Also, I never modulate a whole step above AND a whole step below any particular note.

Despite all the distractions that I have had lately while thinking about how to sound better when I am soloing I have managed to memorize the first 11 songs in my top 90 list in addition to Montagne Ste.Genevieve (which I can play all parts perfectly), Paper Moon, Autumn Leaves, and Cherokee. It is starting to get harder to memorize things, but I am making progress. I am hoping to reach the milestone of 20 within the next 10 days.
Since the day that I started memorizing (April 1), I have managed to memorize 1 per day. It will be hard but I want to see how long I can keep up that rate of memorization as a personal challenge. Djangos Tiger will be a huge stumbling block but I nearly have the head memorized at full speed.

I stumbled onto an idea that I had about chord substitution. Say you have a progression with 4 chords which consists of two chords rooted on the 5th string and 2 more chords rooted on the 6th. You can actually make the chord progression easier and with possibly a better choice of voicings by substituting the “box-shaped” progression for a nice chromatic “inline” progression. By using tri-tone (which is the note on the opposit side of the circle of fifths) for the chords which are rooted on the 6th string, you end up with 4 chords with roots all on the 5th string as the following example shows.
Take for example the progression Cmaj7, Am7, Dm, G. This “box-shaped” progression can be altered to become Em7, Ebmaj7, Dm7, Dbmaj7 OR Em7, Eb9, Dm7, Db9, Cmaj7. This becomes an easier to play chromatic progression following the inline path of E,Eb,D,Db,C.
You will notice that the Djangology chord progression in the Robin Nolan lesson books already follows a chromatic chord pattern. Try transposing it back to its original standard square shaped progression by substituting chords. Note: In these examples assume that Em7 and Am6 are both chord substitutes for Cmaj7. Ebmaj7 or Eb9 are also tri-tone chord substitutions for Am7. Finally, Dmin is a chord substitution for a B half-diminished chord.

I have put together a list of gypsy jazz tunes IN ORDER of how important that I personally feel they are to this genre of music. Feel free to take the list and alter it for yourself as you see fit or give me a comment on how you might organize them differently.
1 Minor Swing
2 Dark Eyes
3 Minor Blues
4 All Of Me
5 Daphne
6 I Can’t Give You Anything But Love
7 Nuages
8 Douce Ambiance
9 Djangologie
10 After You’ve Gone
11 Out Of Nowhere
12 Django’s Tiger
13 Honeysuckle Rose
14 Manoir des mis Reves
15 J’attendrai (Tornerai)
16 Sweet Sue
17 Coquette
18 Blue Drag
19 I’ll See You In My Dreams
20 Limehouse Blues

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I have heard Autumn Leaves many times but until now I did not actually realize how different a song can sound when you simply play it in a different key, but it does. I have been learning it in the key of Dm and I would recommend to everyone that they learn this song in both keys. But as for playing the song, in the standard Em key, you can use the following chord substitutions:
A section:
“sheet music”: Am D7 G G Am B7 Em Em
“jazz chords”: Am7 Am6 GM7 GM6 Am7 Co7 Em Em
1) Am–>Am7: in most cases, you can play a m7 for a minor to get a “jazzier” sound (for example, you could change all the Em’s to Em7′s). Another common jazz substitution “line” for the plain minor chord could also be incorporated into this song: instead of Em Em, try using an Em7 or Em6. Also, you can use the chord “opposite” on the circle of fifths, which is the Ebm for the Am chord.
2) D7–>Am6: for a V7 chord in a major tonality (here, D7, in G major), you can substitute the V9 (D7->D9); in addition, D9(no root)=Am6 [V9(no root)=ii6]; therefore D7 can substitute for Am6, which follows nicely, voice-leading-wise after the Am7.
3) G–>GM7-M6: for the I (major tonic or “key”) chord, especially long stretches thereof, the M7 or the M6 can be played in lieu of the boring plain major chord.
4) B7–>Co7: indeed, most diminished seventh chords you’ll see can be explained as substitutes for some dominant seventh-type chord.
To solo, you only really need TWO scales:
1. E natural (aeolian) minor (=G major!) scale: e-f#-g-a-b-c-d-e. This will fit all the chords except the B7 & Co7.
2. E harmonic minor scale: e-f#-g-a-b-c-*d#*-e. This will fit over the B7 & Co7 chords. Notice that the only difference from the minor scale is the d#. In fact, it’s actually easier to just think “d# instead of d” when you come to these chords than to worry about “harmonic instead of natural minor!”.
3. For a little spice, try our favorite diminished 7th arpeggio over the Co7 & B7 chords: c-d#-f#-a. These tones are in the harmonic minor scale given above, but in a slightly different approach.

I’ve been struggling the last few years with memorization. I can probably play any gypsy jazz tune that has sheet music to it. I have tried them all but none of them have stuck. Up until now I have only memorized a handful such as Djangology, Cruikshank’s version of Djangos Castle, Minor Swing, Paper Moon and mabye one or two others. Until now I have thought that I would never need to formally memorize songs and that if I played enough that the songs would start sticking in my head but they haven’t. It just isn’t working. My crutch is my notebook that I lug around everywhere. It’s a sad sad state of affairs.
So now I am going through a “formal” process of memorization. I am memorizing them one by one as well as memorizing my song list. I am up to eight now. My goal is to memorize the entire Cosimini book and then I will move on to the songs covered in the Robin Nolan books. This way I will hopefully memorize all the chords correctly, having gone through the Cosimini book, and I will be able to apply that to the remaining songs that I learn.
As I go through this memorization process I find that I play these patterns repeatedly until I remember them and that turns out to be a lot of strumming. This is important because I am starting to actually realize the benefits of the arched hand as I reach my stamina barrier.