I’m similar to you, and I agree with your points completely.
I learned to play classical piano as a child and teenager and got reasonably good at it. But as my interests expanded to music that is normally not written down, I had less need to read music notation. Fifty years later, I still play the piano every day, but the only reading I do is occasionally looking at the chords and melody lines for jazz standards.
The music theory I learned when young has been very helpful over the years, and it would have been more difficult for me to absorb it then without using standard music notation. But I no longer think about music in terms of notes on a stave; I have gradually developed my own mental representation of it.
I still listen to classical music, and I do wish that I had acquired and maintained better sight-reading skills so that playing it would be a pleasure for me now rather than a chore.
I learned to play classical piano as a child and teenager and got reasonably good at it. But as my interests expanded to music that is normally not written down, I had less need to read music notation. Fifty years later, I still play the piano every day, but the only reading I do is occasionally looking at the chords and melody lines for jazz standards.
The music theory I learned when young has been very helpful over the years, and it would have been more difficult for me to absorb it then without using standard music notation. But I no longer think about music in terms of notes on a stave; I have gradually developed my own mental representation of it.
I still listen to classical music, and I do wish that I had acquired and maintained better sight-reading skills so that playing it would be a pleasure for me now rather than a chore.