| Surprisingly (maybe) I don't disagree with a lot of what you said. Exhibit A: Paul McCartney, who's produced some of the most timeless music ever written, and can't read music. Exhibit Others: it's too early in the morning for me to think of those. Give me some time. However, everyone who plays on the studio session to record your composed-by-ear masterpiece for the CD will be an excellent sight reader. Guaranteed. They wouldn't have gotten the gig if they weren't. "Staff notation" is pretty damn flexible, as you'll learn if you try to write a program to produce it as well as music publishers have done for centuries. You already said it's a way to communicate with other musicians, but I'd just add that oftentimes in popular music, that communication is just a score with a tempo and bar lines marked off, with chords and rests in the bars -- no individual notes. Furthermore, there's immense room for interpretation: if the chord is G7#13, an experienced player will laugh and say to himself "ok, so that's just an altered seventh, and by the way, I always add a ninth to a seventh chord." |