Well, what I was getting at was being able to play a song the way it was initially recorded.

One can play Whiter Shade Of Pale on the guitar, and people would recognize the song, but it is a classic B3 song.

It can be played on B3 with a less complex bass line and sounds good, and one can interpret the original in many ways.

What became apparent to me was that although I could hear Procol Harum playing the song and duplicate most of the notes, I was missing things. Only when I looked at the sheet music, did I understand what I did not know.

The question then becomes, why start out trying to learn something by ear? Is it not less work to start out sight-reading something, commit it to memory, and then play it by ear? That would assume one knows how to sight-read.

So, is it faster to learn to sight-read and then use that skill as opposed to trying to learn a song accurately by ear? Obviously, both methods can produce the exact same results based on the sheet music being correct to begin with.

The answer would be different for different people I assume

Billy

“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig?
“Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”