Re: tips on how to learn jazz styles
The best advice I can give to get away from sounding like you're just playing scales and modes is to concentrate on chord tones, which are of course, those notes that make up chords. So for, say, a 7th chord, those tones are the 1-3-5-b7-9; a minor 7 is 1-b3-5-b7; Augmented is 1-3-#5 etc.
Once you can see the way these notes (numbers) scatter themselves the length of the fretboard, they can become your main melody notes. All 12 are eligible, but only chord tones should fall on the strong beats.
That, and remember that interesting solos/improvisations are those that are melodic. Melody is not one continuous, linear, series of notes. Melody is a series of phrases. Phrases begin and end; I like to see them as short excursions away from and back home. Home is any old chord tone.
If you really know the chords, and you can see their tones the length of the fretboard, then you can see the outlines of an infinity of 'good' melodies.
Have a look at
http://www.thatllteachyou.com/improv.html which is a promo page for a book I wrote (don't worry, Evan Skopp is a (new) friend of mine, he won't mind me mentioning it). You'll see how a difficult chord progression can be navigated with ease if you're thinking chords rather than scales. Chords are a kind of more detailed, tailored to the moment, look at scales ... scales/modes are 'too much information' when seeking melody.
To me anyway, that's my advice, but we all have our own way of thinking about things ... happy twanging!
Kirk