Reading Vs Listening to Learn Piano

Two books that might interest you are these:

The Pianist's Problems,Newmann

Guided Sight Reading,Deutch(I know,but it is a fine explanation of a sight reading approach for beginners.)

A few years back,I took a jazz history survey course and had to do a paper for the grad credit. I did a biographical sketch of Charles Mingus.

Mingus was a cellist and if he could learn to play string bass,he could get paying work in roadhouses in Southern California. He got a bass and played along with a radio for about three weeks-getting good enough to play semi-pro bass. The rest is history.

It seems to me that if you can learn what you hear,you could play recordings of music you'd like to learn,and play along with them.

Do you remember how you learned to read? Someone,probably a relative, read to you for a half hour a day,while you looked at the book,untill one day,it made sense. No one tried to explain the rules of grammar to you first.

If you ever change your mind and want to learn to read music,DON'T DON'T get caught up in "The lines are every good boy does fine;the spaces are FACE". Get a recording of the JS Bach two part inventions,and the music. Listen to the inventions and watch the music. Do that every day for a year and you might be suprised how much music notation skill you pick up.(Then do the three part inventions;then the Well Tempered Clavier.)

If that approach works for you, pick a piece of music you want to learn,watch the notation,listen to the recording,and play along. Then play and watch the music;then play it from memory.

Pragmatist

Now that sounds great! Thank you for the suggestion.

For the one or two music lessons that I obviously did not stick with, "Put Put Goes the Little Steamboat" somehow did not fill me with inspiration as an adult.

I still find it curious that so many people seem to think reading is essential.

Again, how do we explain Stevie Wonder?

And could anyone please suggest a similar exercise to Pragmatists suggestion for the Bach inventions, but in a blues or jazz form?

get a player piano. it's probably the best to which you might inspire.

I'm pretty sure Stevie Wonder can read music (braille) and even B.B. King has a music degree, something he does not like to advertise. Sight reading/playing and being able to read are two very different things (and sight reading itself is a subjective term) and depending where you want to end up is how important reading will be. Developing a good ear (and techincal skills) is most important as being able to hear whats going on with the musicians your playing with (or playing along to) is what what it's about especially if you are looking at going down the jazz path but either way you need to have an idea of what you are doing. This leads to theory, if you really want to progress you must have an idea of what it is you are doing and learning to read is not really neccessary in learning your theory but it helps...ie: being able to read the notes of a scale you wish to play.

The adavantages of beig able to read are that the more songs you learn the harder (impossible for me) it is to remember the chord progressions or structures so at least learning to recognize the chords you are playing is essential for following charts. Another useful tool of being able to read is that you can look at sheet music (and hear it if your good enough) and study what the person is doing...what I mean is if you are interested in what Charlie Parker does you can see on paper what it is he is doing rather than trying to work it out while it flys by you when you are listening. Getting to a basic level of reading is not as difficult as most people think it is. I have had excellent success with teaching students to read by seperating the elements, starting with rythm first (clapping out patterns to a metranome) and waiting till they grasp that then introducing notes.
Hope this helps.