The vast majority of my coffeehouse cohorts back in the Fifties and Sixties sang only songs that had been recorded by someone, learning the songs off records. Song books were a—closed book(!)—to them.

I kept coming up with songs they had never heard before.

I did learn a lot of songs by ear from records, but a large chunk of my repertoire came from song collections like Folksong U.S.A. by John and Alan Lomax, Carl Sandburg's The American Songbag, The Ballad Tree by Evelyn Kendrick Wells, Cecil Sharp's One Hundred English Folk Songs, The Richard Dyer-Bennet Song Book, and so on. Looking at my bookshelves right now, I have about eight feet of songbooks and song collections.

These would not be open to me if I could not read music.

In addition, I took a batch of classic guitar lessons early on, and can toss in an occasional guitar solo in my programs if so inclined (I love hearing someone in the audience mutter, "Gee, he can really play that thing!"). Learning classic guitar pieces would be next to impossible without the ability to read music.

Sure, you can get along without it. Lots of people do, and do quite well, in fact. But this is in spite of their inability to read music, not because of it.

It ain't that difficult, folks!

Don Firth

P. S.   Contrary to popular believe, being able to read music—or for that matter, knowing music theory—does NOT mean that you are "limited to the rules." Unless YOU let it be.

P. P. S. By the way, I am a lousy sight-reader (which is to say, I can't look at a song in a song book and sing it right off. But I can read through it and get a pretty good idea of what it's supposed to sound like. And especially if I can pick it out on the guitar.

It's next to impossible to sight-read for classic guitar. When you get up the fingerboard a way, the same note can be found several different places. Where you would finger that note depends on what went before and what comes after. So to learn a classic guitar piece, you have to experiment with it awhile and figure these things out. Not even Segovia or John Williams can look at a piece of guitar music and whip it right off. Unless it's extremely simple. One of the very early Fernando Sor studies, for example.