Connecting your inner voice to scales?

General Music Discussion
#1

So I’ve posted a few times about this but I’m still struggling.
In my head I can hum along and solo n all that, yet actually knowing where I am even roughly in a scale eludes me.

I try do re me and all that with nursery rhymes, but there is still a gap between my understanding of scales and my inner voice. I’ve been humming along and freestyling in my mind most my life, yet only the past few years really tried to practice solfage exercises.

Is there ever a point where you just started to see where you were with your mental voice? Do you guys have any advice or experience in this pursuit? I am really wanting my relative pitch to improve but its always like grasping at something in the dark, flailing about no idea where you are.

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#2

I feel like this is one of the only areas in music that came pretty easily to me lol! Most things I’ve really struggled with. I wasn’t going it alone though, I had a good teacher in college. Now, I definitely practiced what he presented me a good bit, I just don’t recall the struggle. Maybe you just need to have the material presented differently?

I don’t fault you if you take this suggestion with a grain of salt, because I do not own this product. This is purely from my take on his excellent YouTube videos I’ve seen on many other topics. I’d imagine Rick Beato’s ear training method is very good and explained very well. I have no idea what it costs, but maybe he has free videos too?

More of a response to your statement here:

If you hum do re mi fa sol, and you hang on that last note (sol), how is it, if you are in fact singing the correct pitch, that you don’t also know you’re at the 5th scale degree? Forgive me if I’m misunderstanding.

For me, I do recall in the beginning always going back to “do”. If I wanted to identify a particular pitch in a song I was hearing, or humming, I’d first try to sing “do”. From there, I’d sing up the scale until I hit the target not. I’d think “Ah ok, I know it’s “mi” that I was hearing. The song is in the key of eb Major, so I’m hearing the third note of the scale. It is a G”.

That sort of thing. After a while the training wheels come off and you’ll just identify the notes straight off.

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#3

I’m not sure I exactly understand your question - is it basically, “I can hear a melody in my head, but I can’t translate that into knowing which note of the scale I’m hearing”?

If so, ear training is the answer. I’d suggest playing intervals - try this. Pluck the A on the 5th fret of your E string, and then pluck the open A above it. Unison pitch, just do this a few times to set a baseline. Then, while holding the 5th fret A, pluck the A followed by the the 2nd fret B, and do that a couple times while thinking “that’s the sound of a major 2nd.” After a little, repeat but with the 4th fret C#, thinking “that’s the sound of a major 3rd.” Continue up the major scale like that, trying to internalize the “sound” of an interval.

Next try comparing intervals - the sound of a major and minor 3rd, for example.I think it’s easiest to hear this when the notes can beat against each other and bleed into each other a little, but also try playing rhem distinctly too.

Over time you’ll want to be able to not only recognize what each note is relative to the drone note you’re playing over, but also the intervalic jump as you go from a root to a fourth or root to a fifth, or a fifth to the root, etc. If you can recognize those pitch moves and kind of “ground” them in the overall harmony, then you’ve gone a long way towards being able to connect melodies in your head to scales.

That said - I may have totally misunderstood your question!

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#4

I do hum/sing solfege as a practice, yet it seems totally disconnected from my inner ability to just freestyle a melody or solo. I don’t use solfege at all in my inner voice as I’ve only recently started trying to practice it.
If I sing do re me do, do re me do, me fa so, me fa so, etc. I know where I am due to the words. But if I just randomly hum a few notes, I have zero understanding or mental grasp of where I am in a scale. I’m just humming in my mind, with an intuitive feel.

I am coming into this fairly late in life, I started playing guitar at 27, so my inner voice that I’ve always been connected to has developed with a total lack of conceptual understanding of music and scales keys etc… I can hum along with a song and freestyle in roughly the same key as it, yet it’s completely out of my conscious mind if that makes sense? It’s like I can talk but don’t know how to spell.

#5

Yes I’d say you understand what I’m saying.
I am doing ear training a fair ammount though atm it’s mostly consistently repeating nursery rhymes and visualizing the intervals. I’ve been doing this for at least over a year, tho honestly rather loosely and not aggressively focused.

I have also recently really been trying to tune my guitar by ear, and focusing on the beats/warble inbetween then to harmonize the strings relative to each other. So the idea of doing a drone in my mind and going from there may help, I’m unsure if the warble that happens between slightly out of tune strings can be replicated in my mind, but I will work on this :grin:

#6

@WhammyStarScream I think this is pretty solid advice, especially after seeing you said this:

To tie @Drew’s nice suggestion in with your solfege, you could also tell yourself which solfege syllable you are on when you say the interval name ( re = maj2nd, mi = maj3rd etc).

Also, you could test yourself by playing a root note, trying to sing a given interval above that and see how close you were. To me, this is great because you’re applying the sounds to how you’d play them on your instrument.

All that said, I’d check out what Rick Beato says. Reason being, we’ve learned from CtC that people who are accomplished at things aren’t always the greatest at explaining them or even understanding what they themselves are doing. Ear training, for me, was very organic and it just always clicked. I wish I could say the same for my goddamned picking!!! lol! Point being, I have no idea if what I’m telling you will be relevant for you haha! Rick Beato has gone through an iterative process with his method. I’m sure he’s had feedback from people and made his approach better over time. Again, speculation based on other stuff I’ve seen from him. I don’t own his ear training method, I just feel like it has to be good!

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#7

As well as recognising the interval between 2 notes, being able to hear say a major chord and sing the 3rd or whatever is cool. When you can do this then you can play the chord in various positions, sing the interval and then play it on your guitar (using whatever fretboard visualisation method you use). This will then enable you to make the connection between the music you are hearing, the voice in your head and the location on the guitar

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#8

It’s quite interesting as my picking has always been very easy for me and natural,I’ve even messed up my natural picking by trying to pick like EVH and Jason Becker yet have been very adapt at adapting to them and making it work. Yet my mental grasp of scales and keys etc has been non existent, I have zero formal musical education as a child besides my dad dancing to, I’m to sexy :roll_eyes::rofl:

I’ve been exposed to music most my life but its always been mindless for lack of better word. I’ve never been educated in any structure, so I believe thats why there is such a disconnect between my inner voice and my later conceptual understanding of scales etc

I have a phase I consistently say to myself, “The road the hell is paved with good intentions, without work… it doesn’t work”.

I think perhaps my lack of work in this area and my relatively older age is whats causing this disconnect. I can solo endlessly in my mind humming along from my experience in listening to music, but understanding where I am in a scale is currently just a pure blank.
I also draw a total blank when asked math questions, I have fairly bad attention deficit, and anyone expecting computation from me is met with a blank, I’m so focused on them and me that I can’t process anything else. This might be a reason why numerological things such as scale degrees become lost to me consciously, and I draw a blank.

Idk tho, I’m putting ideas out there and unsure of them, but perhaps you’ll understand.

#9

Here’s another thing to try, and I’ve done a bit of this as part of the songwriting process so I can say from firsthand experience it can be helpful - if you have a melody in your head you want to get out on guitar, record yourself singing it, juyst nonsense sylables or pitches or whatever, and then sit down with that recording and transcribe it onto the guitar.

I’ve definitely had songs start as voice memos on my phone, and while I randomly go as far as recording it, I’ve started to arrange solos by just listening to the rhythm tracks I’ve recorded and kind of hum along for a pass or two, and only then picking up my guitar.

Some time learning to recognize the difference in sound between a 5th and a 6th will make this translation process a lot easier, but the nice thing about treating it as a transcription process is as long a you sing the melody reasonably well, you’ve got all the time in the world to go back and figure out which scale degrees are which.

Actually, if there’s anything I learned in college, it’s the road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs. :+1:

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