[stephen_g]

I don't think any of that actually adds up though. I had about 10 years of music reading experience when I started learning the piano, and it was still hard. Took me years to get to a decent level. Because playing an instrument (or learning an instrument in a different class to ones you already know) is actually just very difficult in itself.

I don't think music notation ever held me back for a second - I remember when learning, you'd learn the music notation for something new first in a few minutes, and then spend days of practice doing exercises learning how to play it well on your instrument.

Similarly with science, medicine, etc. - you can know all the terms, but the real difficult part is trying to understand the massive complexity of what they're describing!