Playing 'by ear' is a completely different skill from playing by memory. Most 'ear' players do not read music and have little desire to do so.

I am able to do both, although there is a slight twist that I tend to 'hear' the music and play by ear if sight-reading! This is because I learned to sing at sight before I picked up an instrument in my teens.

Memorising is certainly NOT cheating - it is a skill that some would envy. I know people who cannot manage without the printed 'crutch' in front of them, and this even applies to singers.

Moreover, I would suggest that memorising puts you more 'at one' with the music - your ability to 'see' the dots in your mind's eye bears this out.

Learning by ear and playing by ear are really the same thing with possibly a different level of skill. Reading the dots until they are memorised does not necessarily breed an ability for playing by ear, but may in some instances. There often has to be a conscious decision to abandon the dots.

Lastly, does it really matter? If you enjoy what you are doing, and it, in turn, gives pleasure to others, is all that is important! Yes, it's possible your version of a tune may not be exactly the same as someone else's, but 'right' and 'wrong' only exists where the tune's composer is known, and a hard copy of their original is available. Otherwise, the 'folk process' justifies as many subtle variants of a tune as people playing it - even to the point of the tune being significantly different.

Off topic slightly - I'm Chief Musician with the Earl of Stamford Morris, and we include the Badby tradition in our repertoire. The tunes have interesting twists when compared with the more 'mainstream' versions - for example, 'Trunkles'.

I'm sure that the 'bluesy' sound of the Badby version is simply explained if you consider that it's possible the musician responsible simply was trying to play the 'normal' tune in G on a one-row 'C' melodeon, as it works! It's extremely difficult to play the Badby version on a D/G melodeon, as some of the notes (F natural for example) are missing! A C/G Anglo, on the other hand, presents no such issues.

Badby Trunkles is on Brian Peters' 'Anglophilia' album - oh, and I'm cited in the sleeve notes as his source! Brian's version is quite different from 'my' version even so - and Brian told me not so long ago that the tune is now in the repertoire of a New York morris side! It seems they learned it from his album!

;o)