Playing the changes or not

[UKPete24]

Hi people.

Okay I've been playing the guitar for about 3 years, read some books, watched millions of videos obviously, took Paul's Davids, Rick Beato and others's courses, lessons, online lessons... and with all the time and money spent I still feel like some fundamentals are missing. My goal is to get my inspiration from RnB singers for my guitar phrasing.

So I know there were probably tons of discussions about this. Lately I've been practicing a lot on simple chords progressions. I watched this video where the guy says "stop believing you need to play the changes, pros don't do it" and I also think that the intention and phrasing matters the most. But whenever I try playing without hitting the changes at all it sounds like shit... so I tried this:

1) mixing the major and minor pentatonic of the I and landing on chord tones of each chord

2) playing the pentatonic or relative of each chord to highlight the changes even more.

Both sound good to me even though in some cases you need some work to find which chord tone sounds the best in context (I found the third is not always the best, right?). What's your approach? I'm starting to think that the sweet spot to me would be the second approach adding some voice leading to the soup. Please let me know how you see the fretboard and navigate it

[BluesGuy]

You wanna be able to play the changes, but you don’t want the changes to be playing you. If all you’re thinking about is how to get from chord to chord that’s what it’s gonna sound like.

[StudioPro]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAOgUdFK0CI- this is how jazz players "play the changes"

[MetalPlayer]

Learn music by ear, full songs, to develop vocabulary of harmony, pitch and rhythm patterns.

[sam54]

Voice leading the changes is one of the practices to develop fretboard orientation.

[Markw72]

Second one would be mixing in arpeggios with scales, sometimes the consonance of your playing can make your playing feel more intentional even if you aren’t