[gjulianm]

> Looking back at my comment and scratching my head. In what way could it even be wrong?

Your original comments gives the impression that reading scores is "bad" somehow. The analogy of "These things are about a different as learning to program and learning to type in a program from a magazine" gives off the wrong impression. I play piano and I get what you mean, music is much more than playing a score. But the score is just a medium to learn a song. It's not "typing a program from a magazine", it's more towards "reading an algorithm description and writing the code".

> I’m not cut off from any genre I’m interested in playing,

The "I'm interested in playing" part is important. I don't think trying to play some classical piano pieces by ear is going to be easy, for example.

Is it necessary? No, of course it isn't necessary to be able to read sheet music. But it's pretty useful, not that hard, and will make a lot of things easier. You could make analogies diminishing every way to learn music (e.g., learning by ear is just like looking at a program your buddy wrote and writing the same, you're just imitating; or learning chord notation is just like writing in scratch, you're limited to the blocks someone created before) but they're not useful at all. While it worked for you, most people will actually benefit from having multiple ways to learn music.

[jacquesm]

> not that hard

I'd beg to differ. To read a moderately complex piece at the speed at which it is played while playing is tougher than most other skills that I've acquired. If it weren't hard then it probably wouldn't be the major reason lots of people give up music, the notation is inconsistent, hard to read, requires mode shifts, requires a lot of attention and can get extremely cluttered. It is anything but easy, but of course, once you've mastered it completely it might feel easy. Just like computer programming feels easy to me. But that doesn't mean that it is easy. It's just something I've been doing all my life so the underlying complexity has been long ago internalized to a level where I'm not really thinking about the code, just about the problem I want to solve.

[gjulianm]

> To read a moderately complex piece at the speed at which it is played while playing is tougher than most other skills that I've acquired

Playing moderately complex pieces will be tough, no matter the method. Also, you're using the score to learn it, in most cases by the time you're able to play it at the correct speed you don't need to read every note, you use the score as a cue and guide. And some pieces fit with different methods, for example I find it more difficult to play pop songs by sheet music than by ear (or ear + chord notation for the harmony). On the other hand I recall Satie pieces, they're pretty easy to read but I'd really struggle a lot if I wanted to play them by ear.

> If it weren't hard then it probably wouldn't be the major reason lots of people give up music

Is it though? I'd say that the major reason lots of people give up music is because it's harder than they think, and because there usually is a disconnect between what the student expects and what the teacher wants or teaches.

> once you've mastered it completely it might feel easy

This also applies to your point. I think people would get frustrated with their professor if their way of teaching pieces was just playing it and saying "now play it" without telling them what the notes are. Playing by ear is not easy, and it's really tough for people that haven't developed a musical ear and don't know any musical theory yet. At least when reading there's a set of instructions that you can follow and advance on that.

[turtlebits]

There is a balance between memorizing/finger memory and reading across piano players.

I think the skill you are talking about is sight reading, which isn't necessarily something that is required to play the piano at a high level. No matter what, you still need to practice. A lot.

[jacquesm]

I think I'm aware of that :) That's why I wrote this software in the first place, see title of the article!

[cassepipe]

Have you got interested in alternative music notations? I've dug around and it turns out people have thought about the problem. Have you ever tried any of them?

[jacquesm]

Yes, very much so. There is this Japanese one that I really like:

https://muto-method.com/en/history.html