> it gets easier to sight-read a jazz piece from a fake book There's a reason they call these "fake books". The purpose is to get close enough that you've effe

> it gets easier to sight-read a jazz piece from a fake book There's a reason they call these "fake books". The purpose is to get close enough that you've effectively re-created the music without hitting all the exact notes. If that's your goal, then you're totally correct: familiarity with the genre will be enough to make it so that you probably played something that basically sounds roughly kinda mostly like basically what the author kinda roughly wanted it to sound like. That's real music! But it is not sight-reading. If you tried this in an Orchestra they'd tell you to GTFO. If you actually care about playing the music exactly (and many don't, and that's fine!) then you can't be guessing at what note comes next. You have to actually read the music. Conventions have nothing to do with that. If you find it easy to sight-read a complex piece of piano music, you either: - Are an absolute phenom wunderkind professional piano player, one of the top in the world - Have actually heard the song played before and are using your ears as much as your eyes (nothing wrong with this!) - Are guessing and getting it wrong sometimes (not necessarily anything wrong with this either, but you'll learn it wrong and then never master it exactly if that's your goal)