Fran, you are far from insulting anyone, you are talking reality. Years back my accordion play sat with his book in front of him reading every note. One night I waited until his head turned and took his book. The night went well, and he never used the book again. The secret of playing without is to know how to recover. We all make mistakes.

“Learn to play the piano in four weeks” a course, on TV, which allow you to play a song in a very short time. It was presented on TV.

They opened up with this statement: “If you can whistle the melody of a song you can play that song without reading the music; but you must learn the chord progression first”.

IMHO, John C.

PS, John, good post, it says so much about the subject.