Thanks for the prompt reply. My bad, I said down a few frets…I meant up a few. 
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Ah … now it makes more sense.
Yes.
There are good notes further along … of course. That’s why we have so many frets … more good notes!
Something special happens at fret 5 - have you figured out what that is yet?
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My favorite part of this journey so far! What a great way to spend my time! At first, I admit my inner voice was saying negative things like, ‘That’s too difficult,’ ‘That is too advanced.’ HA! It was great fun!
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Honestly when I see people of people improvising I always thought it was something I would never be able to do. As others have said, when you get to the creative said of things it can be very scary. I loved the tip about starting with only one string and going from there. Also, the example of you doing it really helped me. It was a lot of fun. Thank you!
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Amazing!!!
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I had a ton of fun with this one. It surprised me how well I was actually able to play along with it!
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Super fun!
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I found one really fun thing with this lesson was the playing along with your improvisation and using the gaps you left to do a bit of a conversation. Sometime “talking over each other” sometimes repeating an idea you played or something similar. It was just really fun to ebb and flow between your choices and my own.
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Nice one Daniel 
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This is really Fun! Suddenly you feel you could probably play guitar 
It is a similar experience like I first played the “Whats Up?” chords with strumming pattern and it really sounded like the song
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This was a magical experience for me. All the notes in the scale sound ‘right’ against the backing track and any other noted sound very ‘wrong’. NOW I understand musical keys and scales and chords and everything. All those impenetrable youtube videos suddenly become intelligible. This is really something - and it’s only the beginning! Thank you!
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Love it! i never knew scales could be so much fun THANK YOU Justin for bringing the guitar live for me in a way i never anticipated
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I am a bit unsnure about this. So just like melody, the notes we play when improvising are ‘in time’?
So a good place to start at first might be just on the beat (let’s say in 4/4 time). And with one string to start with. The high E string with notes E, F and G… Then so just like melody we have whole notes lasting for four beats, half notes lasting two and quarter notes on each beat. 1 2 3 4. Once we feel more comfortable we can start to put notes on the ‘ands’ and so forth. I just wanted to clarify. I understand there are less rules involved but we still do everything in time? Hope this made sense and any further advice is welcome. Thanks
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@Playzan That is a really thoughtful approach and gives you a great set of stepping stones to use.
From little acorns mighty oaks grow.
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Also once I started with the backing track, it was much more intuitive (and fun) than I thought it would be. A little but of overthinking but I hope my other idea can help if someone struggles to start somwhere
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I was doing this already - by ear - but it took longer to find the right notes through trial and error. I suppose we will get to it, but I’d like to learn how to tell what scale to use when solo’ing to a song … perhaps it involves finding notes by ear until you figure out what scale to play? But there are so many scales so perhaps that requires a lot more music theory knowledge … hope to find the key (no pun intended) to this at some point in my nascent guitar journey!
Welcome to the forum Robert
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Finding the Key is exactly what you need to do.
Once you know the key of the song you can figure out what scale to use.
At first it as easy as figuring out if you playing in a Major or minor Key once that’s established knowing the scale can be a little trickier.
Seeing this lesson is on improving using the Major scale I’ll stuck with that.
Start with the major scale you’ve just learnt. This is a movable scale meaning if you move it up two frets you will be playing the A major scale, two more frets is the B major scale, 1 fret is C major.
Find songs in these major keys and start noodling around using this major scale pattern in the proper key.
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im having the same problem how do i know which notes to play
Hi Isaac - welcome to the forum!
At the end of the day, you need to use your ears and decide what sounds good to you. If it sounds good to you, then it is good! However, don’t expect to be able to play great sounding melodies straight away - it takes time and practice. Justin has given some hints in here - sticking to a few notes, staying on the thinner strings, leaving lots of space and repeating ideas.
If you stick to the scale then the good news is that there are no ‘wrong’ notes, some will sound better than others depending on what the backing track is doing, so just listen and see what you like
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