You can use the shapes of the minor7 chord as a rootless Maj9 chord.  The 7th of a minor7 chord becomes the 9th of a rootless Maj9.

These are good for comping with a bass player who will cover the root.

Thanks to the CAGED method, I know the shapes of all the major scale positions well.  But I'm still lagging visualizing a mode if the mode's root is not on the first or sixth string.  I made this chart to help me memorize the shapes for all the modes for all the roots. 

This post is really a rehash of something I learned from this lesson.  I rehash lessons here mostly for my own benefit, to internalize what I'm trying to learn a little better.  That page is very straightforward with a video example and you should check it out.

Playing "outside" is the concept of playing notes not specifically in a harmony.  In a diatonic progression, all the chords are "harmonized" to fit the scale of the tonic.  If A minor is the I chord, all the changes should be chords with notes in A minor.  Playing "outside" increases the tension, and makes things sound more "jazzy."

There is a spectrum of how "out" you can get.  You can play a scale over a chord that has NO notes in the tonic scale.  That is the most "outside" you can play.

The simplest way to do this is to play a minor pentatonic (the blues scale) either a half-step above or below your tonic.  With the example of A minor, if you start your minor pentatonic blues scale on Bb or Ab, you will be playing ZERO notes in A minor.  That's as outside as you can get.  Same with a tritone -- or augmented 4. 

You can also play scales that are "less" outside with scales that have some key notes in the tonic scale and some notes out.  Play a minor pentatonic starting on the fifth and or ninth.

The minor pentatonic is a scale most guitarists learn early on -- this is a way to use that scale to get some very interesting sounds. 

Here's some other lessons from that same guy.

I've been trying to increase my chord vocabulary, based on inversions of many chords I already know.  It's been slow going, so I just created a new flashcard series: Jazz Guitar Chords. 

There are just over 120 fingerings of Maj7, Min7, Dom7, Dom9, Min7b5, and Min-Maj7 chords.

I have been working on extending the code of Elias Dornales's Fretboard Studies, a browser app to help  study the guitar away from the guitar.  The code can be downloaded from github or you can view this version on the web here.   It works best in the Google Chrome browser.  It's still a work in progress, but it is pretty usable right now.

The 'app' is just an html page with some javascript in it.  There is a '?' button in the upper right which gives you some help text.

There are a few features I can highlight.  If you play around with it, you can see that clicking on the fretboard will show the note.  You can also show the intervals and color the notes the way I like to color my fretboard diagrams (Orange: root, blue: third, green: fifth, purple: seventh).  You can change the key, and if you go down to the tabbed 'Dictionary' on the left, you can repaint the notes per an arpeggio or scale.

You can also drag these 'Notegroups' over to the 'Player/Dashboard' on the right.  This lets you cycle through the scales or arps in a 2-5-1 for instance and see how the notes change.  These Notegroup buttons only repaint notes you have painted.  The gray bars below the fretboard can paint entire frets quickly.

If you want to make a "Quiz" for yourself, you can enter a Page Title and then paint all the notes that are 'correct.'  When you click 'Quiz Link,'  you will get a blank fretboard for you to fill in all the notes satisfying the page title (e.g., Major Scale), and then click the "Check Answer!" button to see correct notes in green and wrong notes in red.

You can also use the 'Link' link to generate a URL which will reproduce all the notes and settings you've chosen.  There are examples of these at the bottom.

Finally, there is a 'Random Interval' button which creates a random interval quiz.   The red note would be the root note and the green note would be its 'interval.' 

Enjoy!  I'll be trying to update some things in the future.   I really like seeing how the notes appear in a position through a series of changes.  Also, quizzing myself on the intervals is something I need to do every day.