You learn some songs, strum and sing along, and it feels great. Every time you learn a new song, you learn the chords for that song, practise until it’s perfect, and then move onto another song.

Over time, you build up a large library of chords in your head, and if someone names a chord, you can probably play it.

Sounds pretty good, right?

But here’s the problem:

That knowledge is random, disconnected, scatterbrained…

You have no clear picture of how every chord fits together, what sounds good with what, and so on, because you learnt them randomly, and you learnt them by name, not by how they fit into a bigger musical picture.

You can’t see, hear, or understand how chords in different keys are related, and whenever someone needs to change the key, you rely on the same chord shapes and barre chords so you can just move up or down… but you don’t really know how to do it in your head.

It’s fractured knowledge.

Sure, the list of great guitarists who can’t read a single note is longer than either of us thinks.

If they can be great without it, why should you learn?

The answer is that learning to read music deepens the possibilities of learning, expression, and creation.

Without it, you’re resigned either to learning by being shown, figuring out yourself, or tabs.

Don’t get me wrong, all those are great, but there’s something to be said for a medium that expresses everything; you can’t always learn by watching, because you may never see a piece played; you can’t always figure everything out, because some pieces are too complicated; and tab, though an incredible resource, has well-known limitations, especially when it comes to rhythm and timing.

But perhaps the best reason to learn to read music is for what it gives you in terms of musical immersion.

What do I mean?

Well, if you can read music, you can see, analyse, and understand all the great music of the past, both classical and a lot of jazz, and this helps you to see the connections in all music.

Being able to read a piece and get a sense for how it works or sounds before even playing has great value, and deepens and enriches your understanding of music.

It also means you can take music from the greats of the past and translate it onto the guitar.

(Something The Beatles did ALL the time)

This is both fun and rewarding: it’s a fun challenge to try to play a piano piece(for example) on guitar, choosing what notes to include, what notes to cut out.

So that’s why you should learn to read music.