You have the general idea right. You want the melody to be recognized but you have a little room to improvise as well. Follow the melody an octave above the first break and noodle around with different chord positions as you go. It's amazing what kind of little nuances you can create as you improvise.

Up the neck breaks are fun because you can play around with the melody. Instead of major chords, try using minor ones; i.e., em for G, am for C, bm for D and so on. Lots of times you can incororate the tune in these chords and get a neat sound. Don't use them all at once, but vary when and where. There are lots of ways to do those down the neck hot licks up the neck. Fool around with them and see what you come up with. Variety here is fun, but do incorporate the melody as much as you can.

Remember that because you’re not playing open strings that much, transitions need to be fast and fluid from one chord position to the next.

Geoff Hohwald has a book on up the neck improv that I found very helpful. Here’s a link to the book with DVDs. You can also get it on Amazon for $10 less but you have to access the lessons on the internet.

https://banjocompass.com/product/bpb13/

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Originally posted by Laurence Diehl

Remember that because you’re not playing open strings that much, transitions need to be fast and fluid from one chord position to the next.

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Great reminder, good Diehl

For me, playing up the neck is all about following the same chord progression, but using up-the-neck inversions of those chords. Are the notes an octave higher? Not necessarily. If you play out of a D-shape G chord on frets 7-9, the D note on the 3rd string is actually the same tone as a D note in an open G chord.

And I use only three fingers, holding the chords on the first three strings only -- leaving my pinkie free to find non-chord melody notes around the top of the chord.

It's all about the chords, and playing out of chord positions. 

When I play my upper neck Soldier's Joy break it is essentially the octave twin of the lower.
Thumbfretting the 5th string opens up the choices.

Chord substitutions can happen anywhere on the neck.
I also enjoy playing a melodic high tenor or a "faux" bass on the 4th string.
Whatever might fit the moment.

Janet Davis's "Up the Neck" book is a good primer on playing above the fifth fret.

As already said, the breaks played up the neck in the first positions you encounter above the fifth fret use different inversions (note-stacking orders) of the chords/triads than in the down-the-neck "open" position, so "in general" high breaks don't tend to be octave-higher but otherwise note-for-note replications of low breaks. They have a different sound and identity.

And as Rich said, they're not necessarily an octave higher. In the 7-8-9 G chord, only the B note at 1st string 9th fret is an octave higher than its first inversion counterpart. Well, this position does lose the low open third string G, but the 8th fret G is the same note as open 5th string or 1st string at 5th fret. So we've had that note already. Likewise, the 9-8-10 C chord only introduces the C note at 10 as an octave higher note. Then the 11-10-12 D chord give us the octave higher D.

So, yes, these primary up-the-neck shapes give us some notes that are an octave higher. But  those notes are put on top of the same notes we've heard down the neck. And that's one source of the different sound.

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At and above the 12th fret, we start to encounter truly high notes. Many of us not exceedingly advanced players play up there mostly in two-note partial chord shapes on the 2nd and 1st strings. Here's where a little bit of music theory (knowing the notes in the major, minor and seventh chords of the keys you most often play in) and some time spent figuring out which chords each pair of notes is giving you 2/3 or 2/4 of.

For example: 2nd@13 (C) and 1@14 (E) give you 2 notes of a C chord and an A minor chord. Also a C7, though it doesn't impart the 7th sound.  I'm sure there's one I'm leaving out.  Another:  2nd@15 (D) and 1st@15 (F) give you 2 notes of G7 and D minor.

You can roll on these two-note shapes with various forward, backward or Foggy Mountain Breakdown roll patterns. Even better, when you discover the very musical sound of moving up and down the neck through the chord scales (harmonized scales) implied by these two-note partial chord shapes you can get some advanced musical sound with the Osborne or Dillard roll:  1-2-1-5 / M-I-M-T,  playing the first three notes on one pair then moving to the next on the open 5th string.  For a great example, listen to what Doug Dillard plays starting at 13 seconds in this recording of "Banjolina". Be aware of what you're hearing: The note pairs in this descending pattern are not always part of the underlying chord. The first pair in each group of four may be from the chord, but then he's running down the scale (of the song's key, not the current chord) to get to the next chord. 

John McEuen of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who spent a lot of time listening to and watching  Doug Dillard, uses this same technique in the tune "Togary Mountain" on the first Will The Circle Be Unbroken album. Starts at 1:18. (If you want to play along, be aware the tuning is a half step high)

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An advanced melodic sounding -- but accessible to intermediate players -- up-the-neck trick is a Bela Fleck invention that Tony Trischka has dubbed the "Bela Scale Technique." It combines the same two-note already mentioned partial chords on the first two strings (plus partials two frets apart, such as 2@15 + 1@17 (G major) or 2@12 + 1@14 (Em). To these notes, it adds a 5th string note fretted with the index finger either at the same fret as the 2nd string note or one fret lower. I'll leave it to you to discover which 5th string notes work best.

For a great, free!, lesson on this, watch Ricky Mier's YouTube video. He only teaches one lick using this technique only over a G chord but leads into the lesson showing lots of examples of how he uses it against lots of different chords to play interpreted/improvised melodies. His lesson and tab give the basics. You'll need to do more discovery on your own. I learned this from Tony at a camp over 10 years ago and use it a lot when improvising. Bela uses it extensively throughout his My Bluegrass Heart Album.

Have fun.

Follow-up to the above. Here's a promo video for Ricky's etude lesson using the Bela Scale Technique I discussed above. You can pay for the lesson through Patreon. Or just watch the promo video to hear and see how the technique is used in different ways. All up the neck.

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Originally posted by Old Hickory

Another:  2nd@15 (D) and 1st@15 (F) give you 2 notes of G7 and D minor.

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Forgot: It gives you 2 notes of B-flat!

Every 2-note partial at the same fret of the 1st and 2nd strings is 2/3 of a barre shape major chord that leaves out the root note/name note at the same fret on the unplayed 3rd string.

An important point I left out of my previous long message.

12 + 12 are aprtial G, 17 + 17 are partial C, and 19 + 19 are partial D.  Everything at the 12th fret and above is a true octave higher than everything 12 frets down the neck.

I rely on my chord knowledge to show me where to go up the neck.
It helps me invent on the fly.Gives me choices.

Echo the idea of learn to play melody while in chord shapes. Combine that with licks here and there and you’re golden.

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Originally posted by The Eclectic Banjo

Question: I’m sure I’ll get a variety of answers here but—in general—are high breaks an octave up from low breaks that—in general—follow the melody‘s down beats, perhaps with a bit different versification than the low breaks?

Context: starting to play at a local jam and want to create my own high breaks for staple tunes rather than trying to find them.

Thx

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Yeh well kind of. For the most part you are playing on the first three strings but you'll also need to learn to fret the 5th string either with the thumb, ring or middle finger. This video may help solve some of the fingering positions. If you sign up for a FREE Silver Pick membership you can unlock the full lesson.

As others have already said, knowing your chord inversions--both full and partial chords--can be especially useful. You can wing it, choosing your inversions arbitrarily to get pleasing variety without trying to play the melody. OR you can choose your inversions to give you melody notes. This works well because most melody notes will be found within whatever the main chord is at any point in the song. For instance, in the first two lines of "I'll Fly Away", there are 14 syllables, and all but two or three of them (depending on how you sing the melody) are found within the chord of the moment.

I'm attaching an exercise I give to my students. In actual performance I'd vary the right hand more, but I designed this to get them comfortable a) using different inversions as partial chords and b) finding melodies in the context of partial chords. Because this kind of break doesn't depend on open strings much, you can transpose it to different keys simply by moving the whole thing up or down by the appropriate number of frets. Let me know if this helps.

banjohangout.org/tab/browse.as...l&v=28109

With due respect to all the excellent banjo teachers here, I don't think that the ability to find melodies near chord shapes in various parts of the neck is something you can be told, or even shown, how to do. What the proper chords are, yes. Where these chords are, yes. How to hold them, yes. Useful rolls to pick over the chords, with lots variations that let you catch different strings on different beats, yes. But how to hunt down the chord-adjacent melody notes, no. That's a feel, and I don't think you can develop that feel (once you've learned to find, hold, and roll the right chords) except by fixing the tune firmly in your head and poking around the chord with your free finger (in my case, my left pinkie) until your finger starts going where your ear tells it, as if by instinct. The spots where those melody notes lurk are in predictable proximity to each different chord shape. Once you've found them a few times, you'll keep on finding them. You won't even have to think about the mechanics, just focus on the tune.

But if you expect some book or instructor to write the arrangement out for you, you'll never develop that instinct -- because you'll be using your eyes to find those little notes, not syncing that free finger to your ear. 

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Originally posted by Rich Weill

With due respect to all the excellent banjo teachers here, I don't think that the ability to find melodies near chord shapes in various parts of the neck is something you can be told, or even shown, how to do. What the proper chords are, yes. Where these chords are, yes. How to hold them, yes. Useful rolls to pick over the chords, with lots variations that let you catch different strings on different beats, yes. But how to hunt down the chord-adjacent melody notes, no. That's a feel, and I don't think you can develop that feel (once you've learned to find, hold, and roll the right chords) except by fixing the tune firmly in your head and poking around the chord with your free finger (in my case, my left pinkie) until your finger starts going where your ear tells it, as if by instinct. The spots where those melody notes lurk are in predictable proximity to each different chord shape. Once you've found them a few times, you'll keep on finding them. You won't even have to think about the mechanics, just focus on the tune.

But if you expect some book or instructor to write the arrangement out for you, you'll never develop that instinct -- because you'll be using your eyes to find those little notes, not syncing that free finger to your ear. 

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"I don't think that the ability to find melodies near chord shapes in various parts of the neck is something you can be told, or even shown, how to do."

I've done it. 

"But if you expect some book or instructor to write the arrangement out for you, you'll never develop that instinct"

I'd prefer "habit" to "instinct", but yes, they have to put in the work to internalize it; pre-existing arrangements can suggest the path, but will not accomplish the result by themselves.

You learn by searching and remembering what worked.
A vocabulary is built.