Welcome to the Cafe Saxophone Jay,
I know exactly what you're talking about. I currently learning to improvise blues and jazz on both the guitar and the sax. It's actually easier for me to improvise on the guitar, precisely for the reasons you just gave. As you move up and down the neck of the guitar the scale patterns change under your fingers. Because of this you tend to improvise differently in different position. In fact, the guitar is a great instrument to improvise on precisely because of this feature.
The sax doesn't offer this. You learn the scale, it's basically under your fingers. And that's it. So you're going to need to find some other method of learning how to "create new riffs".
However, what I've found is that since I play both instruments, I can actually do some improve on the guitar. I record it with a backing track. Then I pick up the sax and try to play similar note runs. What I'm discovering by doing this is that I'm learning a whole lot of new "feels" on the sax. They are "patterns by feel". You don't visually look at the sax buttons or keys like you normally get a visual of a guitar fretboard. Instead you start playing by "feel".
So now what I've been learning to do is have a 1st position "feel" on the sax. Then a 2nd position "feel" on the sax, and so on as I work through the same riffs that I had improvised on the guitar.
I think if you try this you'll quickly see what I mean.
Just put on a really simple backing track. Maybe even something that just stays in a single chord or jumps back and forth between two chord. Then improvise to that on the guitar in the 1st position. Then pick up the sax and try to play those same riffs. You'll get a "feel" for what's that like.
Then improvise in the 2nd position on the guitar. Stop, pick up the sax, and play those riffs on the sax. You'll get a totally different "feel" for how those riffs are played.
Just continue up the neck of the guitar in this way, transferring the different positions over to the sax. For ever visual pattern on the guitar (which is also a specific FEEL on the guitar too), you'll find a different FEEL on the sax when you try to play those riffs.
In this way you are lucky to being playing both instruments because the guitar is actually going to help you open up a whole new way of expanding your riff patterns on the sax. And of course, the really cool thing is that as you try to "duplicate" the guitar riffs, on the sax, you're going to find that you may want to play them slightly differently on the sax. So in this way, you'll also being opening yourself up to even brand new riffs that came from the guitar, but then got modified as they were transferred over to the sax.
Anyway, that's what I've been going. I'm a RAW beginner on the sax. So thus far I've only been doing this in the key of G. Well, it's actually the key of G on the guitar, but it's played in the key of E on the alto sax. Don't forget the need to transpose the key for whatever sax you are playing.
But so far it's going really well and I'm hoping to continue this through all the keys.
But yeah, I would have been dead in the water had I tried to just improvise on the sax alone. Going back and forth between the different positions on the guitar to the sax just opens up a whole new world of possibilities. I'm playing things on the sax that I would have never thought to play using the sax alone.
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