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Oops. After you posted Solar, and I wrote about your take, I uploaded these and I thought I posted that I was doing so. I actually forgot that I uploaded them too. Weird.

So yes, both are from jams with these guys I've been playing with. As you can hear I'm not really solid with the changes and what to do with that CmMaj7 to Fmaj. To my ears its never sounded right, and I'm still struggling to find a way to make it musical. I swear that chord (Cm) was supposed to be some sort of sus or simply a Maj chord, and somehow got recorded wrong and the rest is history.

Anyone know the true history of this tune? Anyone know of a similar chord progression (just the first four bars--the rest has been used on a number of different tunes)

Thanks! Has anyone heard Esperanza Spalding's version in 5/4? She's an amazing bassist and singer.

Scott asked earlier who I listen to for ballads and I realized that what I usually do is think about Chopin, Scriabin and other Romantic piano composers, as well as Satie, and some other more 'modern' ones. So many rich voicings and voice leading to really augment one's jazz vocab.

I dislike the first 5 bars of Solar too. It sounds awkward to me, so I avoid the tune.

I thought it was just me. I thought the chords simple enough but yes, in reality it's not that easy of a tune to make sense of. So I too have avoided it.

But Chris posted it first and started the ball rolling. It really cycles through the changes pretty quickly and you're back to the top so fast that it's hard not to become repetitive.

Now though, I have taken it as a challenge and am still working on it.

I must say I love the tune - and those first 5 bars
One way to look at them is to view the chordal passage in a triadic fashion.

CmMaj7: G major triad
Gm7: Bb major triad
C7: A major triad
FMaj7: C major triad

Do you see a connection?

(LH plays the chord, RH plays the triad [though in the first chord I prefer a Cm6/9 in the LH, and let the RH carry/hold/play the 7th)

I have never thought of Solar as having awkward or strange changes, but now you mention it I can't think of any other tunes that go from tonic minor to subdom major. There must be some though even if I can't think of them offhand.
I did recently find out that Solar was actually written by Chuck Wayne and not Miles though. It seems Miles was pretty good at putting his name to other peoples compositions - tune up, four, blue in green are all further examples.

Wiki: "It is now well known that his tune "Sonny" (not SUnny), named for Sonny Berman, was appropriated by Miles Davis – who recorded and took composer credit for it as "Solar".

I haven't either. I don't lock myself into always playing C Melodic Minor on the Cm Maj7 for the 2 bars. Sometimes I'll play off the C harmonic Minor, C Minor Aeolian (Eb Scale) or C diminished, or play C Dorian too. I look for common melody notes or harmonic structures between the Cm and the Gm7. I might even skip over the Gm7 and play off an altered chord on the C7 for two bars. I could do a mix of starting the line with dorian or melodic minor and then going to diminished or vice versa.

A lot has to do with how the music is flowing (or not ) , the bass player and drummer, my mood or what I'm hearing that day. I try not to force things. How you connect lines & harmonies are very important--some days it's happening for me, other days not.

That's really good advice. I've noticed the first 2 bars start to sound same-old-same-old after several choruses. That opened my eyes up a little bit with the flexible approach on those chords.

I guess it depends on what the bass player is playing. Unfortunately, I'm practicing with iRealB so it's not a real player. Maybe I sould simplify the chord on it so I have room to manuever and try it out. Like put C- triad in there instead.

Simple is good. Try a Cm add2

Using triads is very good too. Again looking for a common connection using triads with the minor Maj 7 but also the aforementioned modes too.

Two more scales/modes that popped into my mind to use over the C minor would be the Eb melodic minor and G harmonic minor. There are others too but those two work well....

Talking triads, what I was focusing on was the augmented triad on the C-Maj7. And then it starts sounding old. Nice to have my eyes opened a little.

Dave, in your recording, what subs did you think you used or might have used? After listening to it a few times, it may not have been as unusual as I first thought. I think some where chromatic subs to ii-V-I's.

The bass player is supposed to follow you if you are the soloist. If you are suggesting a certain tonality the bass player should pick up on it and play accordingly. If you have an unresponsive bass player then you best just to ignore what they are playing and do whatever you like. The clashes that result can be good. Even with a real player there isn't really much time to adjust your voicing or lines to accommodate the bass notes they play.
To break free of the usual tonalities you use try just playing lines with no chord - play anything however wild and get used to enjoying the weird sounds.
Or you could pick a particular voicing/tonal idea and use it every chorus until it is ingrained. This way you can build up a base of fresh ideas for further exploration.

All those scales suggested by Dave F are great.

I love those days when everything just seems to go right and feel good.
I wish I could find a mental approach to make every day like this.

Well the machine can't follow me

But in live playing, instead of having a few clashes before the bass player hears that I'm reharmonizing, stating the first chord as C-(9) would at least make it semi-clear.

Fortunately, I found that my regular bass player does follow me and I follow him rhythmically too. Hard to practice though when I'm just playing against a machine 98% of the time. You're fortunate that you make your own bass tracks

It makes little difference because a bass player may well play any note on either of those chords. For instance a fairly normal bass line on Cm7 F7 would be ..
C, D, Eb, E, F etc
You might think that the E clashes with the Eb in the chord but it doesn't. The rules that you may use about which notes you should and shouldn't use in voicings don't really apply for bass lines.

At first that didn't make sense, but I forgot to think in quarter notes and I now realize that the E would be on Beat 4 (a downbeat). So you're right, that would be a common bass line move. That's good to know.

So when is there conflict with a bass player? Are you saying that as long as the root of the chord agrees on beat 1 it doesn't matter?

I appreciate the bassist viewpoint you share here.

Bassists don't have to play the root on the first beat. Often they may play the 3rd, 5th, sometimes the 4th or a tritone, or other notes, depending on context. There is no rule for avoiding conflict with other players, sometimes a chord inversion and bass note will clash a bit, but that can also be good. When everybody knows slightly different changes sometimes it can take a while to work out what changes the others are playing.