I've got 30 years of honed intuitive, and only intuitive, music understanding. I can listen to a new piece, hum it back the first time, intuitively know what would sound good to accompany it with, and I'll have a feel for what gives that style its sound and be able to come up with a new tune in the same style. Since i was a kid, any moment where I was busy with something, I either listened to music or came up with my own tunes.
If I have to think about music rather than just go by feel, it's numerical patterns. Lets take the only scale I remember the name of, the minor pentatonic scale. I couldn't tell you which notes are in it. I just know I can start wherever I want and it's +3, +2, +2, +3, +2. I only think of it in semitone numerical patterns.
This is a problem because I want to learn to play some instruments now but a lot of them are built around the major scale and treat sharps/flats differently than the notes of that scale. This completely messes with my trying to learn to play as which notes do and don't have sharps and require different playing/fingering feels completely arbitrary and unintuitive to me. I've hated how music is taught with a passion because it just seems like an arbitrarily unintuitive way to look at it... But at this point, I want/need to learn it because it's actively getting in the way of learning to play instruments.
What are your recommendations for trying to learn notes/scales and rewire how I understand music?
Submitted November 30, 2025 at 02:11AM by ygdrad https://www.reddit.com/r/Learnmusic/comments/1pa9ys3/tips_for_learning_notesscales_for_someone_who/?utm_source=ifttt
Javier Rodriguez
Saturday, November 29, 2025