There are a lot of great songs to practice soloing to but I find “Sweet Sue” to be a good one for practicing my minor 6th arpeggios. The song has a chromatic run of dominant chords in the B section and it also has 4 bars of D7 in the first half of the A section and so the song creates nice movement that is easy to follow for someone who still has trouble “hearing” chord changes while he plays. Its interesting playing the Am6 arp over that D7 chord and then trying to transpose that same arpeggio to follow that chromatic run in the B part of Sweet Sue by playing bits of the Dm6 to C#m6 to Cm6 to Bm6.
I don’t really like the Sweet Sue tune. Its not something I would normally play for fun because it sounds too American, in my opinion, but I enjoy the song for how it is constructed and for soloing over.
I’ve been practicing playing the Dm6 and the Gm6 arpeggios over Dark Eyes. I have more trouble with Dark Eyes than probably any song. I will start with playing Dm6 over the Dm-A7-Dm section and the switch to Gm6 when I reach the Bb6/9 to Gm6 chords and then back to Dm and F arpeggios at the end of the form on the final A7 and Dm chords.
With Minor Swing it is a bit easier. I memorized the solo note for note and then I try to stick in some of the concepts I mention above into my phrasing. I try altering the melody, as Django played it, and try to understand my ear a bit better.