Mike,
I think I may have gotten an eyebrow-raise from you at that Austin coffee
shop when I mentioned that I do not think in terms of scales, ever, when
I'm playing.
But one of the bases of my music is your list of stuff to know, below, and
of course it is tremendously useful, probably unomittable if one wants to
play music your colleagues might throw at you, and is undoubtedly
unomittable if you want to compose music.
Once I have analysed and absorbed a piece of music I rarely think of any of
the elements on your list while playing it. As you know, this kind of
thing happens naturally.
I recall that when I was a newbie and didn't understand the concept of
improvisation, I believed you had to have all this stuff running in your
head constantly, and you had to think 32 bars ahead - I thought I was a
fraud for not experiencing playing this way.
The stuff I do actually think about when I'm working is whatever
theoretical ideas I'm developing for my own uses. For instance, I have
developed an approach to soloing that allows me to tell myself, and the
audience, a 'story' that we can all follow, hopefully. A theory, I guess,
in the sense of music theory (as opposed to a 'conjecture'). Since I'm
improvising the story as I go along, my theory gives me interesting places
to jump to - and surprise myself with - places I might not go without
thinking about it, just a little.
Possibly the main reason I think about it while playing, when perhaps I
should just be soloing and that's that, is that I'm constantly discovering
new stuff that goes into my theory of musical storytelling, but only if I
keep a bit of thinking going in the middle of it all. I'm often pleased
when I hear recordings of solos I did sans any thinking, but I have found
that keeping conscious of something, whether one's own personal ideas or
scales and chords or whatever, helps you keep growing and changing. -K
Major scale
Blues Scale
Minor
flat 3rds
the circle of fifths
1st, 2nd and third positions
the 12 bar blues progression
I, IV , V chords
half steps and whole steps