It's not a guitar solo, but that said, nothing will help you to understand the Dorian mode as well as Miles Davis's solo to "So What" off of Kind Of Blue. It's basically a primer on "What is the Dorian mode and how you can use it in a solo." Maybe later, I'll post the tab for the first several bars.
Update: Here are the first eight bars of the solo as I play it, somewhat oversimplified (I've taken out much of the inflection).
$e 10 | $D 12 | $D 12 $B 10 $G 12 $B 10 | $D 12 12 | $D 12 $G 10 $B 10 $G 12 $B 10 | $D 12 $G 10 $B 10 $G 12 $B 10 | $B 13 12 13 12 10 | $G 10 $B 10 $G 12 $B 10 $D 12 12 |
(Btw: is there a way to post standard notation in addition to or instead of tab? I can't figure out how to notate the time values of the notes, and besides, the tab is sort of irrelevant to the discussion below; it's the actual pitches that are important.)
Right, so what's going on here? First of all, keep in mind that a Dorian scale is almost exactly like a minor scale, the only difference being that a Dorian has a major sixth instead of a minor sixth.
So Miles starts of with an emphatic statement of the key: high D to low D, which he lets sit there for an entire bar, playing no other notes to distract the ear from the D-ness of the beginning. Then he plays D-A-G-A-D-D; in other words roots, fourths, and fifths in the key of D. Can't get much more basic than that: he's saying "I'm playing in D, got it?".
Next phrase: mix in an F to get the third in there, so that we know it's D-Minor and not D-Major. So far, so good. We're five bars into this solo and he's played only roots, thirds, fourths, and fifths. Can you imagine playing this solo over a bebop tune? No ninths or thirteenths? No altered chord tones or tones from outside the scale? Not even a seventh, for crying out loud! For five whole bars, he's done nothing but play a D-Minor triad.
So ok, fine, so far Miles is saying, "Just in case you didn't already figure it out, I'm playing in D-Minor. That's D-MINOR, okay? Just making sure you all got it."
And then what? C-B-C-B-A. That's right: the seventh and the major sixth. It's not D-Minor after all: it's D-Dorian. And right after dropping that bomb, he plays F-A-G-A-D-D, echoing the A-G-A-D-D from bars 3-4, just to make sure we put it in context of the entire eight-bar phrase.
It's amazing stuff, even more so when placed in its historical context. Remember, this was the first modal jazz song. No one played like this or knew how to play like this: bebop songs changed chords every two beats---that's two chord changes per bar, and soloists used those changes like a scaffolding on which to hang their solos---and here comes Miles writing a song that stays on the same chord for sixteen bars in a row. It's as if Miles, in playing this solo, was saying, "Look, I've invented this totally new song structure, and you're not going to understand what to do with it unless I show you how, so let me start from first principles." Pure brilliance.
