If you’re learning by ear then you’ll know when you’re not making the right sound and will keep working away at it until it sounds like you think it’s meant to sound. And that’s the problem with learning by ear: there may be details/techniques you do not have the experience/knowledge to recognise (or maybe the notes are just too fast to make out exactly which ones they are or some other difficulty – I’m sure you know what I’m talking about) so you obviously won’t be able to play them without some pointers from other people. I think for most people it’s easier to learn an instrument (in the short term) without also trying to learn to read music unless they’re playing complicated music which would necessitate them to have a better than average memory. Analogy: I don’t need a map to walk around my home town but if I was walking around London a map might make things easier. I’m certain that it’s much harder to add the skill of reading music after you’ve been playing for a number of years (compared against integrating it right from the start) because it’s going to feel akin to having to learn to walk again. Chances are you’d never fully embrace it and you’d always feel more capable when playing from memory.
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