Great point about rhythm, swing, feel, rhythmic language! Definitely the big focus in this and most musics. My (big) hierarchy when teaching and learning music might be something like: Listening, internalising sound, language Singing, playing, reproducing the sound Labelling things to aid in memory and communication Making comparisons, between new and old, between known and unknown, between how two musicians play or sing something Improvisation, changing it up, use what you know to create something (slightly) different
Such a good way you put it re: rhythm is movement through space(time), and how rhythm and melody affect people (one can make a similar analogy for harmony, texture, timbre, dynamics, form, etc)
Fantastic session! Have been following a few of these sessions the last few weeks several hours or a day after you do the live session (since NZ time doesn't really make this easy) Was practicing along, paused the video and practiced the six diminished lines in all four keys, resolving II-V-I and backdoor II-V-I to all four, and then trying extra diminished moves twice, three times, four times as fast, and then when i resumed, the video went through a lot of the same stuff! Wish you'd done A major as well to complete the cycle! Sometimes i found the notation difficult with inconsistent accidentals, could be cool to keep it really "correct" in each key, and then one could see each transposition exactly the same. Also incredibly helpful when playing this stuff in any other tuning than 12-equal, where the flats and sharps are really distinct without 12-tone enharmonic equivalence!!
