JiK says it all well and before I could... :-P Love the hammer analogy... :-)

"I'm not worried about putting the hard yards in on the mandolin as long as the process isn't detrimental to the guitar."

As someone who can play many instruments fake it well enough to fool many into thinking that I can play better than I think I can :-) on several instruments, learning any new skill will never cause old ones to detoriate (unless you refuse to keep up a degree of practice on the old ones!!!) - old muscle music skills don't fall out of one ear as you jam new ones into the other... :-)

The more instruments you learn, the better the musician you will be on ALL of them... the more musical skills, such as reading dots, the better.


"If you mean sight-reading at speed, this is very difficult and must be practiced specially (by most people). It's the sort of thing studio musicians need to be able to do."

Sight reading is considered such an important skill in music exams, that there is a whole section devoted to it. Other essential skills are simple tune memory, playing pieces from memory, transposition on paper, putting (acceptable!!! chord progressions to a given tune), composing a simple tune, as well as the basic 'dot reading skills'.

Speed is achieved thru prcatice.

I was sufficiently good at sight reading that I was able to 'fake' some degree of lack of practice... ;-) and I find I can play much better - more expressively, for instance - if I have the dots in front of me - or the words and basic chord structurejust as a 'fail-safe' - even though I CAN play some things purely by memory.