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Well, of course. I can only do it pretty slowly, and I can still learn songs, intros, licks etc. by finding sheet music online and spending time with it. Isn't that pretty obvious?


Isn’t that essentially the same as memorizing the notes for the whole song?

I dunno, I guess it’s useful, but if I were trying to learn to read sheet music it would be so that I could pick up and play.


I'm pretty fluent in reading sheet music. Still, for most songs the process is figuring out what notes to play in sub realtime, then slowly speeding up where both reading and fingering are limiting my speed. Then, as I "know" the whole song, looking at the sheet music helps my fingers remember which notes come next—together with muscle memory. And here sheet music notation shows its strength. At this point I don't see individual notes, but groups of notes, both in time and in harmony, and because I see them as groups at once, my sight reading can keep up with the song. But that takes practice for each song.




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