I feel like learning random notes would be the musical equivalent of the Chinese Room. You would be good at sight reading, but not be 'musical'.

A bit like when people tell you to learn Morse code, not to learn it letter by letter.

> A bit like when people tell you to learn Morse code, not to learn it letter by letter.

Fun fact, during WW2 there were lots of encrypted transmissions over Morse code, and lots of folk (often women, in the UK at least) had the job to transcribe them. They would then be passed on to the cryptoanalytics specialists in Bletchley Park. I guess other countries had similar arrangements.

So they would sit 8h+ a day and transcribe what looked like garbage to them.