[jliechti1]

Agreed. As a pianist, I not only look at the position of individual notes, but also the positions of the next 3 to 6 consecutive notes. This way I can think in "groups" of notes - which is very helpful for sightreading broken chords quickly.

The one place I could see pitch symbols being slightly beneficial is when notes are either way above or way below the staff. But even then, after some deliberate practice these can be recognized pretty quickly as well.

[masukomi]

I've read for piano, bass guitar, flute, and now ukulele. I can read treble clef, and bass clef just fine, but stick them together as you do for piano and my brain has a conniption. The exact same figure at the exact same place on each staff represents two different notes. I suspect this is because the gap between the two staffs would have required too many intermediate lines had they re-used treble clef for the bottom staff, but this doesn't mean it is a good readability choice.

Regarding relative position. On a piano the relative position of notes on the staff almost directly correlates to position on the keyboard. On a stringed instrument this is VERY far from the case. As i proceed up the scale on a simple instrument like the bass i will proceed right on the neck on one string, then drop down a string, shift left, proceed right on that string, drop down a string, shift left, proceed right on that string. So you've got back and forth, and up and down motions to keep going in one direction tonally. On a guitar the strings aren't all tuned evenly so the back and forth on the neck changes depending on which strings you're switching between. On the Ukulele the top string is higher than the string below it so you end up jumping UP strings rather than down, AND the strings aren't tuned at even intervals. So you've just got a big jumble of movements.

Don't even get me started on the totally unintuitive nature of woodwind fingerings or how they are almost totally disconnected from what's going on on the staff.

In short, the relative positioning of notes on the staff is good from a tonal perspective but crap from a finger perspective on most every instrument except piano.

[cube13]

>In short, the relative positioning of notes on the staff is good from a tonal perspective but crap from a finger perspective on most every instrument except piano.

That's not really a problem once you build the muscle memory, though.

It's the same thing as touch typing. With enough practice, you know that finger placement X will produce note y, the same way you know where the keys on the keyboard are.