Here’s where I am :

I know the 5 position scale system for diatonic and pentatonic, am somewhat comfortable sliding across positions and finding the root. I’m now sick of running the root scale across chord progressions, once in a while I’ll hit chord tones intuitively but very often I’ll just “be in the scale” or end on a scale tone that the current chord doesn’t like.

My long term goals

1) Hearing the chord changes: As someone who has listened to a crap ton of music but had no formal ear training, I can tell when I’m on the root chord, and if listening can tell whenever there’s a chord change. While soloing, the cognitive overload of playing notes and also tracking the chord leaves me running around or incorrectly guessing. I guess what I’m asking is… is there a systematic way to train this rather than feel?

2) Playing the changes

I see multiple ways to do this :

i) learn arpeggio shapes in different positions with the chord as the root (if Am > G, move root on 5th fret 6th string to 3rd or 15th fret with major tonality)

ii) learn arpeggio sequences within the scale position of the key. (This feels insanely hard to conceptualize since I’m only comfortable with intervals relative to the root)

And then comes the tricky part of phrasing in a way that doesn’t sound like you’re trying to change shapes for sake of it. Is this where having a good ear trumps mechanical practice?

I know the long term answer is to take lessons, but I was curious on how you folks approached this, since most youtube content tells you to learn arpeggio shapes and then play with “feel”.

Thanks for reading this far!