[RLetson]

Reading--particularly sight-reading--a score is a skill. Playing music on the guitar (or any other instrument) is also a skill. They are not necessarily connected, though score-reading can be of considerable help in advancing one's playing (especially acquiring repertory or arrangements). Like several other posters, I "learned" the rudiments of standard notation as a kid--at almost exactly the same time I got my first guitar. But while I can (nearly 70 years later) construe a simple melody in the key of C, that is not how I learn new material.

Thanks to much later (mostly after my 50th birthday) instruction, I understand many of the guitar-relevant parts of music theory--chord-building, harmonic and rhythmic structures, chart-reading--which make learning new material and playing with others easier. But even that knowledge is distinct from playing the guitar and from learning by ear. My limitations are mostly due to never acquiring guitar-specific skills and knowledge--the locations of all the notes on the fingerboard, scales and arpeggios--that contribute to the playing of my more fluent playing partners. But knowing-that is distinct from knowing-how, and knowing-how is where the music comes from, at least for me.

Nevertheless, if I could retroactively redesign my guitar-learning experience, I would include more of those boring, repetitive practice sessions, so that, say, a mid-tune modulation or a singer's request for a tune in a non-canonical key would not require a frantic re-thinking of the changes.

And to reinforce some coments in previous posts: Reading, even sight-reading, does not inevitably lead to comfortable improvisatory or informal playing. One of the perennial components of folk and jazz teaching I've observed is getting well-schooled and technically competent players "off the page." I've even noticed very competent orchestral violinists pause when asked for the key of a piece they've called--unlike guitarists, they're unused to thinking of a tune as a set of changes in a particular key. Which does not affect their ability to tear through it at a considerable clip.