Hey & welcome to GT!

Originally Posted by: tonyruffalo3217

I've been spending all my energy learning to visualize the major scale all across the fret board. I'm at the point where I can sort of "meander" all over the neck and stay in key, and I also have a good grasp on visualizing the root, third, and fifth for landing zones. I can improvise slowly all around, where I'm moving around and emphasizing the arpeggio notes, but I feel like I'm in a rut. I've gotten vibrato down, and I'm improving my bending so it hits the right notes, but I just don't know how to develop my playing further.

In order to improvise you need to do 3 things.

1. Find an appropriate scale (key signature).[br]2. Target chord tones.[br]3. Make musical phrases.

So, it sounds like you are on the right track! The next step is build a repertoire of licks you can play in the moment, so you can use the scale & chord tones to build little melodies, licks, phrases.

I covered this topic in detail in this blog post that also has links to GT tutorials teaching the concepts & skills.

https://www.guitartricks.com/blog/how-to-play-a-guitar-solo

Hope this helps!