Nifty approach to playing over minor

[harmonicator]

So I've been playing the same crap over min7/9/11 chords for years now, and while it works and used to sound hip (to me), a lot of these lines had become now stale to me. I talking about dorian and melodic minor lines (and their arps) over minor chords. I occasionally toss in some diminished ideas to get a lil outside, but even that is getting tired, though it shouldn't be.

Well, last nite I was messing around playing my bluesy ideas on a dom7 chord. I like the lydian dom scale over your basic 7th and 9th chords, mixed with the usual pentatonic and soulful double-stops. I was thinking in G while noodling, but I somehow heard or played a Dmin11 while doing all my standard G blues Wes lines....YEAH! I knew all along theoretically that G mixo and D dorian are the same (G lydian dom and D mel min), but the way I was phrasing with the notes had become too overplayed. Thinking like playing a bluesy approach a 4th above the min root sounds waaaay bad. You can hear Benson and Martino ideas kind of come to life, esp adding in some chromatic 8th notes.

So, check it out! Whatever minor7th chord/harmony, play (phrase or think) lydian dominant a 4th above the root.

Funny, same notes...but feel totally different thinking "dom over minor" versus "minor over minor".

[Structo]

That's strange, I just play by ear over the chord progression and it sounds good to me.

[frdagaa]

As a corollary, I've heard a lot about "minor over dominant" -- eg Am7/A dorian over D7 -- the chords for this are often note Am7/D --it makes a D11 sound.