I play guitar. I amaze people when I say I have no idea what notes I'm playing. I know the Nashville Number System (learned it before knowing it had a name) and

I play guitar. I amaze people when I say I have no idea what notes I'm playing. I know the Nashville Number System (learned it before knowing it had a name) and use that. So going back to your example - I find the root and that's my 1. Next I look for does it have a 3 or b3, i.e. is it major or minor? That'll drive me to a major pentatonic or minor pentatonic. For a lot of songs you can stop there. There's a note that's outside of the pentatonic? That'll indicate your mode. The nice thing about the Nashville Number System and guitar is once you have this information and know what your 1 is it's a set of patterns. You can put my 1 anywhere on the fretboard and I know what to play. Makes transposing super simple too. Bottom line - I think in intervals, not notes. When playing a song by ear, which is how I mostly play, I could be off by a semitone or two but it doesn't matter: point our where the 1 really is and I'm still good to go.