I've recently been practicing voice leading chord scales, trying to keep the bass note within a range of 2-3 frets, playing through all the diatonic 7th chords in a scale. So ill start off in say, root position I chord, then go to the ii chord by playing the b7 in the bass, the smoothest voice leading possible is what I'm going for. The problem im having is the time it takes me to go through a chord scale, it takes me around five minutes to go through a chord scale (unless I've got the sequence of shapes memorised but that's not the aim of what i'm going for).
My question pertains to how i can visualise the chords leading into one another faster/more efficiently, i currently look at the bass note and figure out how it relates to the next chord, so in the case of being on say, a root position I chord, i would use the bass note to determine where the next chord can fit, in that case my brain's thinking, 'okay this bass note is also the b7 of the 2 chord so i just need to play the 3rd inversion/b7 in the bass'. For the guitarists out there that are able to voice lead on the fly, do you visualise like this also or do you follow the root of the chord, wherever it is and use that? Or is there some other way to visualise?
Maybe i just need to keep practicing but im worried that ill never be able to reach my goal of playing inversions on the fly if i keep using the same method, i haven't seem much improvement in speed over the last month, it's still a big mental process.