Imma put it like this.. there are a lot of gospel musicians who don't know how to read music but play well without reading music, but that does not mean that they will not benefit from reading music. Let me break down the benefites of reading music:
First of all,
there is a big difference between sight reading and reading to interpet a piece of sheet music. Sight reading is when you can read and play a piece of sheet music that you never practised or heard of before, and you can play it well.
Then, there are music musicians like me who read music only to interpet it. I read music to look for such things as chord progressions, tritones, to learn new chords or chords that I never used before in a song, and to get the basic feel of that song before I start to play it by ears.
You see...
it is more of a benefit to a gospel musician to learn how to read music to interpet it, simply because people will not hand you a piece of sheet music on Sunday before they sing a song and tell you to play it. Plus, it is a slim chance that they will actually sing in that key anyway, unless they are a trained vocalist or musician themself.
What a lot of musicians who don't read music don't realize is that Hymn sheet music was composed and arranged for voicing, and not for instrumentation. So by reading hymn sheet music a gospel musician can learn such things as chord substition by using tritones, because
believe it or not hymn sheet music contains tritones in it.
If anyone have any questions you can email me at
shadowphace@yahoo.com or message me and I will answer your questions. I can also give you some great books to teach yourself how to read music, because I taught myself to read music and play piano.
God bless you.
