I enjoy recognizing patterns as I am playing through "rhythm changes". My ear seems to lead and my mind seems to follow.
 
That's my idea of good fun. :-)
 
 

What's up with that altered scale? It's like it is a diminished for the first 4 tones then a whole tone scale. I can play it ok, but I always forget to avoid the regular 5. I jump when I play it, forgetting it's ok sometimes (like when arpreging the the chord). idk. That one is nutty. When I do play the regular 5, it's so easy to shift straight to mix mode and forget I was trying to hang on the altered scale.
 
So here's a real question... with the Lydian flat7 scale...
I've learned that you can compose the chords of the key using the scale and skipping every other tone... like first chord is 1,3,5,7 second is 2,4,6,1 etc...
 
So with the lydian flat 7 scale is the first chord in the key minor? Do you compose the jam using that? or do you just play the lyd b7 scale over dom 7s and forget organizing chord changes with it?
 
http://www.strumpatterns.com/Other/10ScaleChart.pdf
 
https://spark-public.s3.amazonaws.com/improvisation/L02/L02_10_most_important_scales.pdf
 

I have not delved into anything for Week 3 yet, but he seemed to be taking the perspective (in Week 2) of the scales being applicable to the underlying chord being played (without regard to the chord progression). My take on what was presented with this is that the four dominant 7th chord scales are applied to the underlying chord only. Again, I have not done anything with Week 3 where it seems he explains this further, but I assume the Lydian b7 scale is "most applicable" to the dim7 chord (so 4 of the notes in that scale match the chord notes played).
 
For the Altered scale, he mentioned in the videos that the 5th is sort of an optional note, since the 5th is always acceptable to the root note of the chord (after he said that I was scratching my head as to why it is not included, since I have never seen those three dominant 7th scales before).

I was saying that when I play the fifth I forget the altered scale and switch to the much more familiar mix mode (more familiar to me). For me, remembering to skip the fifth helps me remember that I'm in the whole tone half of the altered scale.

Clear as mud. ☺

Oh! Yeah... I seem to fall into that one myself at times... for the longest time I could not shift between Dsus4 and D without doing a pull off with my pinky. After catching myself doing that enough times "out of habit," I finally sat down one day and played Boston's "More than a Feeling" several times just to force myself to LIFT my pinky off that string.

I finally watched the week 3 videos, and ended up laughing at myself on how I process information. As he was spending time talking about identification of scales, I was thinking "Hmmm, so if totally clueless, just don't use the notes in question..." Then it occurred to me (during the minors discussion)... "So, dropping the 2nd and 6th (the clueless/lazy route) gives you 1, b3, 4, 5, b7... the minor pentatonic... go figure " Now I am giving myself a stigma, lol.

lol
http://stabilitynetwork.blob.core.windows.net/g-tunes/20141022_JazzClass_Week3.mp3
 
This was my jam for week 3. Nothing close to the brave assertions I made about what I might play over it.
 
I mixed it to -13 dB b/c I think 13 is lucky. ;-)