Do you or dont you ?

[J R Rose]

I asked my long time friend Jim Florence, (RIP) if he read music and his answer was just enough that it don't hurt my
picking. Ha/Ha. J.R. Rose

[Mack Quinney]

I read but mostly for piano or mandolin. I play pedal steel by ear and knowing the chord progression and structures. I commend anyone who uses actual sheet music to play the steel. I don’t think I could do that. I do like to explore extended chords on both the piano and the steel and improvise within the chord structure. Whichever you do, have fun with it!

[Roger Rettig]

Certainly, anything can be figured out using our ears, but some music is more elusive. If I had learned to sight-read both clefs I'd have been able to instantly access even complex music; what a blessing that 'short cut' would have been!

I recall having the actual notation for James Taylor's guitar-part for 'The Frozen Man'. I had been able to work it out myself but I thought it'd be fun putting it in front of my pianist/MD colleague Simon Fricker - a highly accomplished musician - and wondering if he'd be able to replicate the complex patterns of the fingerstyle guitar on the keyboard.

It was written in B major but Simon didn't hesitate. He played it with fluidity and accuracy as soon as he saw it. Every nuance was there (a credit to whomever had transcribed it, it must be said) and it struck me then that there was a gaping void in my toolbox as a musician.

Simon, by the way, was also cursed with perfect-pitch (not relative-pitch; most of us have that); he couldn't listen to something that had been artificially retuned (tape-speed, for example). But he could 'spell' the most complex chords instantly by ear the moment he heard them.

It was a privilege to work with him.

[Bill McCloskey]

To me the greatest advantage of learning to read sheet music is the vast repertoire of music it opens up to you. When I was deep into the Alkire tuning, I was playing music Eddie Alkire was writing back in the 30's that had never been recorded ever.

Because I could read music, for better or worse, I was able to bring back some of that music from the dead:

https://youtu.be/up21nKZR3E4

https://youtu.be/zAVOZ2eHhQ4

[Roger Rettig]

That was my point, Bill: it opens the door to a wealth of music that might otherwise remain unknown to us or, in the case of a piece that perhaps you like but struggle to figure out (or may have forgotten), it unlocks its secrets.

[Bill McCloskey]

Your post inspired mine Roger. I agree 100%.