I hear jazz music in eights. I believe that a jazz guitar player should be able to play in eights and/or sixteenths on demand, with triplets to the rescue here and there. Once you can be consistent with these short notes then all you have to do is “not play” some of them for variety. However, if you start by not playing them and if you carry on with disconnected or extended single notes your performance may suffer when you are hard pressed by an occasion that absolutely demands a flow of notes. Music is music whether it is expressed by 100 notes per second (yeah, sure) or one.
That’s just how I feel, anyway.
When I practice those kinds of runs and try out spontaneous scale choices I tend to keep recording to see where I stink and where I’m doing okay. Here are some excerpts from those sessions.
