I'd be interested in hearing from Barry or other advanced players about what he/they think should included if one were making a checklist of jazz guitar fundamentals. I'd like a checklist to guide my daily practice. What are the basic technical skills that every jazz guitar players should master? Item number 1 would probably be major scales in five positions in all keys. What's next? Is it 10, 20, 30 items long? I want to maximize my practice time and have confidence that I am working on what I should be working on to get a leg up on this thing...

1. Make sure your chord study is parallel with lines. You should see "pictures" of the chords within each scale choice. Watch Barry play solo and you will see how he throws chord forms into the middle of his lines at times. That's just years of practicing both.

2. Tunes - Always try to apply your practice to tunes. Start with ii-V-I major and minor. Autumn Leaves and Blue Bossa are great (there are many others). Try to start with Tunes that have common changes.

3. 8th Notes - Try to get used to playing lines in straight 8th notes. If you can manage a tune like this, it's just a matter of "editing" by using notes of longer/shorter duration or leaving space.

4. Transpose - Try to learn a tune by the function of the chords rather than the chord names. In other words, think of Autumn Leaves as ii-V-I major > ii-V-I minor ... etc. That way you're not thinking Cm-F7-BbMajor > Abm7-D7-GMinor ... if you are thinking too hard about the actual chord names, it will inhibit your ability to play tunes in any key. One advantage of the guitar is that once you know the "pictures" you should be able to play a tune in any key fairly easily.

Obviously there is much more and this is just off the top of my head. Personally, I think it's more important to know a few tunes very well, than to try to build your repertoire and not really mastering the tunes. "There Will Never Be Another You" includes probably about 90% of the changes you will encounter in 80% of standards. If you can get that one down at tempo, it may take you months or years. But once you have that down, you can pretty much learn a tune a day if you're so inclined.

OK, i'm on the right track. I like to throw down a chord when I am am able and then use it as connect-the-dots template for a line -- I'm novice at this but I get the idea and have experienced a bit of it....

Great feedback, thanks for the reply.