Just to be clear on this little table above, what I'm referring to is the degree of the scale of the chord in a measure, not the key signature for the song.

So if I have an E-7 chord, and it looks like it calls for Dorian mode, that calls for what amounts to a D major scale. And D is the 7th degree of the E scale, so that's why I wrote VII major scale. I can pretty quickly see the E, and my Dorian mode choice that I wrote down ahead of time studying the chart, and think - oh, I need to play notes in a D-major scale, but concentrate on E-7 chord notes as the main non-approach, non-passing notes.