As good as I am at recognizing patterns, it's humbling when you miss some! I went into my most recent lesson feeling like I knew my octatonic/half-dim scale. Tony calls it a symmetric diminished scale.

So, he asked me to play it in C. Then he asked me to play it in F. Then he asked me to play it in G. I figured he was just testing me in some random keys.

It became clear later that the point of asking for those three are that those are the only scales I really need to know. All the rest of them are just the same scales as the same as those three because of the symmetry of the scale. Eb, F#, and A are the same as C. Ab, B, and D are the same as F. Etc.

He showed me some sequences then too - any pattern of notes in that scale can become a sequence of playing the same intervals lower in the scale. I probably just need to see some more relationships in the scales and then I'll be able to start putting those sequences together in real time.