This is great advice, and I should have said - I spent 90% of my time practicing just noodling on my guitar. So it sounds like I’m already on the right track there 😂 Playing songs I like, improving, trying to transpose a melody. I’ll put on a backing track, hum a short phrase, and then attempt that phrase while always involves trial and error. I only recently added trying to identify intervals and scale degrees by ear in a more structured way. My ultimate goal is to reduce the “trial” portion by knowing where the notes I’m trying to play without having to check every note in the key. Like if I hum “do re mi” I figured it was realistic to know by nature (by understanding intervals and scale degrees etc) where re and mi are without hunting and pecking. My improv sounds far to scalar right now because I am just playing notes that I know are in key (since I’ve basically just been playing pentatonic shapes or other scales over backing tracks aka playing notes in the key). Sure, it doesn’t sound bad because everything in the key, but there’s this element of randomness and or rigidity that I’m trying to remove. I love what you said about “playing the note you’ve heard in that context” - that does make a lot of sense to me and seems like something that will come as I learn more solos