“We all do ‘do, re, mi’, but you have to find the other notes yourself.” – Louis Armstrong

In Western music, it really does come down to the fundamentals of a 12 tone scale.  The Sound of Music is not too far off in its accidental teachings in this way.  Then, as the man says, it’s up to us who would try to find our own voices in music to find the other notes.  Maybe that’s why I have always loved the guitar.  There in the bending of notes we can find the microtones that are as expressive as the range of a well trained voice.  Be it crying, or happy, or whatever mood you might happen to be in, it is so easy and natural to convey that on a guitar.  Other instruments are maybe a little more constricted.  Either way or any way that you look at it, music is a universal language.  Some of the notes like a sort of grammar are well known and quite established.  Some notes you have to find yourself.