What is hip…

Good music is hip, it’s that simple. Perhaps the biggest request from students is how to play outside the changes. It all comes down to one thing, understanding how to resolve the V chord. Ultimately what makes going outside work is how well you can resolve back in to the songs harmonies. It takes time to teach yourself to hear, or perhaps I should say accept outside sounds. There are tons of exercises and examples from recordings that can help with that. When playing though, it needs to come from an honest place. By that I mean it needs to something that you are legitimately hearing at the time. It also requires working with musicians who are in tune with or at least supportive and sensitive to what you’re trying to accomplish musically. When you’re first starting out keep it simple, just go out and come back in. I know that maybe a bit to abstract or sound flip at first but it’s part of learning to trust your ears.
Take the time to learn harmony, at a minimum the basics of it. Chord substitutions, tritone subs and secondary dominants. It all plays into it. By learn I don’t mean to simple understand it mentally, it needs to be in your ears and under your fingers. Like with anything else, if you’re just going to collect information and not build up the ability to apply it, you’re wasting your time.
For myself, I’m always thinking harmonically in terms of where I’m going even when I’m playing more melodically lyrical things. This doesn’t mean that I’m premeditating my solos. It simply means that’s how I taught myself to play. Hopefully, I’m not thinking at all and listening to what’s going on around me. Although, like everyone else there are times where I feel I’ve played myself into a corner. At those times I’ll briefly fall back on what I’ve learned to hopefully bail myself out of trouble.
When placed in context every note suggests a harmonic movement even if we don’t recognize it at first we hopefully still hear it. While you’re learning, by the way we’re all always learning, one of the best and fastest ways to learn is to write out a line or solo in the style you wish play. Then don’t stop there, get it down and be able to play it. I’m not suggesting that you write out your solos on tunes. As you gain more experience you’ll learn that any good improvised solo that you’ve heard either live or on a recording only worked because or what was going on musically with the group at that particular time.
I have no problem with the learning or teaching of scales and modes. They’re tools, learn to use them. In jazz contexts learn what they are showing you. If for example we take the 3 minor modes of the major scale. In their most basic application over triads Dorian gives us the major9th, minor 3rd, perfect 11th, perfect 5th, major 6th and minor 7th or the chord. Natural minor gives us the major 9th, minor 3rd, perfect 11th, perfect 5th, minor 6th and minor 7th of the chord. Phrygian gives us the minor 9th, minor 3rd, perfect 11th, perfect 5th, minor 6th and minor 7th of the chord. All of these notes are valid over ANY minor chord. Of course there are situations dealing with the kind of music you are playing where certain notes may not be desirable to play. But those sounds are what those 3 scales are teaching you. The object is to teach yourself how to use all of those notes and others that are available to you. This brings us back to understanding resolutions and understanding harmony. That V chord isn’t going anywhere. Even in modal music where we don’t make use of V I cadences, we still have to apply the principle of tension and release.
Lastly, don’t forget the number one rule of music, if it sounds good, it’s good.