There's more to music than an "acoustic thing" because of processes such as composition, arrangement, rehearsal, and so forth. Whether those things are necessar

There's more to music than an "acoustic thing" because of processes such as composition, arrangement, rehearsal, and so forth. Whether those things are necessary or useful depends mostly on what genre you're interested in playing. Some genres, like rock and folk music, involve little or no written material. There are certainly players who have never read music from a sheet. I attend a week-long folk music camp every summer, and there's no sheet music. I perform jazz "standards" in small ensemble settings entirely by ear. But I also belong to a 19-piece jazz ensemble, that plays from sheet music. It's really not practical to expect the players to figure out their parts by ear and perform them from memory. Requiring that would greatly reduce the scope of our repertoire, and the band's ability to attract players. Sheet music literally expands the artistic palette of the composer, to the delight of both the performers and the audience. Sheet music allows students to study and work through a large amount of literature, quickly. My kids are both studying music in college, and the amount of material they're exposed to every week is mind blowing, in lessons, class, rehearsals, and even getting together to play for fun. Having been a part time working musician for a few decades, I've also noticed that sheet music is a band management tool. My band would be incapable of performing if we couldn't call in one or two substitutes per performance, some of whom are sight-reading on the bandstand. Same deal for a classical orchestra. In a smaller band that I play in, the bandleader is composing most of the material, and we scribble edits and rehearsal notes in our parts as we collaborate on refining each piece. Up through the 1960s or 70s, the instrumental parts for most popular music was recorded by professional musicians who were working from written material, even if they made sometimes dramatic changes to the songs. This was just the most efficient way to manage a studio date. The touring musicians could always learn the songs by ear later on. There are stories of bands, where the first few dates of each tour still sounded rough as the band was coming up to speed on material that had already been professionally recorded.