Now that I can play diminished scales over most songs effortlessly, I now have this idea of embellishing my diminished runs with chromatic tones 1/2 step above and 1/2 step below any given tone in the diminished scale. Here is an example of what I suspect is a player doing this over the skeleton pattern of a diminished run. Specifically in the B string at the beginning of this pattern.

E||————————|————————–|
B||——8–7–6–5——–|————————–|
G||——————7–4–|————————–|
D||————————|–6–5—————–5–|
A||————————|——–8–7–6–7–8—–|
E||————————|————————–|

I might be wrong about this, but I am going to experiment with it further in the next few months.

Here is the list of 65 tunes that I am working on right now. I am still working on most of the songs in set 5 but I will have these ALL memorized solid in a month or two. At this point I also know the melody for about 70% of these songs.
Set 1
All Of Me (C)
Deuce Ambience (Gm)
Nuages (F)
Bei Mir Bist Du Schon (C)
Joseph, Joseph (Bm)
Djangos Castle (D)
Rose Room (F)
Sheik Of Araby (G)
J’Attendrai (C)
I Can’t Give You Anything But Love (G)
Coquette (D)
Montagne St. Genevieve (Em)
Minor Swing (Am)
Set 2
Minor Blues (Gm)
Avalon (F)
Aladdin (Am)
Swing Gitane (Gm)
Le Flots du Danube (Am)
Stardust (F)
Seule ce Soir (G)
Tears (Cm)
I’ll See You In My Dreams (F)
Hungaria (G)
Sweet Georgia Brown (G)
Noto Swing (Am)
Dark Eyes (Dm)
Set 3
Swing Eighty-Five (Am)
Take The A Train (D)
Besa me Mucho (Dm)
Limehouse Blues (G)
Tchavalo Swing (Dm)
Sweet Sue (G)
Honeysuckle Rose (F)
It Don’t Mean A Thing (Gm)
Cherokee (Bb)
Them There Eyes (D)
Oh, Lady Be Good (G)
Blue Drag (Dm)
Paprika (F)
Set 4
Crazy Rhythm (F)
Russian Lullaby (Dm)
Djangos Tiger (A)
Some Of These Days (Em)
Bossa Dorado (Dm)
After You’ve Gone (C)
Caravan
Metro Swing
Daphne (D)
The Flintstones (C)
Swing 42 (C)
Oriental Shuffle (F)
China Boy (F)
Set 5
Time On My Hands (F)
La Gitane
Bouncing Around
September Song (G)
Anouman (Dm)
Swing 48 (C)
Melodie au Crepuscule (D)
Si Tu Savais (Cm)
Nuit St. Germain des pres (G)
Troubelant Bolero (E)
Melancholy Baby (C)
Stompin At Decca (C)
Topsy (Cm)

The caged system is idea for playing around basic minor and major tones. It is a system that has been around for a long time and is very important to understand for playing music, even if you don’t happen to prefer to think in this fashion.
This system will help you to master maneuvering around on the bottom four strings. The caged system is composed of 5 basic shapes:

The partially caged system is composed of only 3 of those, which are A, C, and E. You may have heard the term “ACE” before or maybe you have seen this kind of thing in books such as the Johnny Smith method for guitar.

Integrate this simpler concept into your already highly developed knowledge of diminished runs and minor 6th runs. The reason for this is that the D shape is already inferred by the C shape and the G shape is inferred by the A shape. This simplifies things and gives you room to concentrate on other more important gadjo concepts.
You should be able to derive the major and minor caged systems by knowing your basic major and minor arpeggions. Also, you should know how and where to add 6ths notes in all your arpeggios.

I just got back from the Robin Nolan concert here in Portland. He played a small room tonight with about 60+ people. I got to sit in the front row this time and the show was brilliant with great sound and lighting. The room where the concert was held handled the sound really nicely.
This is the first time I have seen Kevin Nolan live and that was a treat. I’ve seen RNT with Jan Brouwer and John Friedrichs in the past and this is the 6th time I have seen Robin Nolan play. Kevin Nolan really nails those latin rhythms cold. I was really impressed. I was also surprised that he played classical/flamenco style fingerpicking rhythm for two songs, which was a bit different than I am used to but it worked well.
After a standing ovation they came out to do the magic trick two guys playing one guitar which is always really fun to watch.
Some songs played were Number One, Meditteranean Blues, Blues Clair, Minor Swing, I Love You, Wild Rice, Sweet Georgia Brown, Tears, etc. It was really fun having them in town and finally actually shaking hands with these guys. By the way, Simon Planting seems to fit in well and its nice to see an acoustic bass playing behind them now.

I got this crazy idea on how to connect a dimished interval with another adjacent diminished inversion by using the whole tone scale. Here is the run that I use to conceptualize this. The middle segment is the whole tone scale that I use as the connector.

-9-10————–|————–6-8-|-6-9———–
——11———–|———-7-9—–|—–8———
———9-10——|——7-9———|——-9-6—–
————–8-11-|-8-10————-|———–8-5-
——————-|——————|—————
——————-|——————|—————

Play this run as fast as you can to see what happens.
I prepared this exercise with the key of Bb in mind but I am still not sure if it has any theoretical grounding so take this idea lightly.
Also, here is another run, extracted from Djangos Rose Room melody that shows how you can “pretty up” your diminished runs.

——–7-10——————12-10-
——9——9———9-12-9—–
-7-10———-10-7-10———
——————————-
——————————-
——————————-

Using the following arpeggio, try anticipating the chords to Dark Eyes and playing along with it. The following arpeggio is Dm6. Over the A7 chord play a A7 diminished OR the Em6 arp. Over the Gm6 and the BbM play the Gm6 arpeggio.

————–5-7–
————6——
——–4-7——–
——7————
–5-8————–
——————-

Just transpose the chart above to derive the Gm6 and Em6 arpeggios. You should probably memorize this D minor 6th arpeggio in ALL positions rather than only this one position. More importantly you should know your basic major and natural minor arpeggios but adding this 6th is important because it seems to fit well with diminished patterns such as the ones found in gypsy jazz.

Blues written and recorded by Django were:
Blues 10/40
Blues 03/47
Blues 11/52 unissued acetate
Blues 02/53
Blues en Mineur 04/42
Blues en Mineur 08/47
Minor Blues 07/47
Minor Blues 09/49
Blues Clair 02/43
Blues Clair 08/47
Blues d’autrefois 07/43
Blues for Barclay (two takes at one session) 07/47
Blues for Ike 03/53
Blues Riff 07/48 Chicago concert
Also: Swing 48, Heavy Artillery
Plus: “Blues” by Phillip Brun, “Blues of Yesterday” by Andre Ekyan, and “Blues Primitif” by Eddie Barclay.
Thanks to Scot Wise for this list. I wanted to use this list while I am inpired to researching the song Minor Blues due to the lesson I got from Stephane Wrembel.

I got a new batch of 100 bumperstickers and I still have about 80 left. They cost me about 75 cents each to make. I will also be taking a bunch of them to Djangofest Northwest with me if anyone wants to get them from me there for just $1 each.
I will also trade stickers for videos or other Django related items.