When you learned to read as a little kid, it took you years to learn enough words to read, and you didn’t start with Shakespeare or Tolstoy, you worked up from See Spot Run.

Reading music is the same. You learn the first, start to recognize chords and patterns and context clues, and you learn to read more and more complicated things until you don’t see the individual pieces, but the actual song like you don’t see individual letters when you read a book now.

I’m 3 years in with a teacher, and I’m getting better every week. It often doesn’t feel like it, because my pieces increase in difficulty as I’m progressing. It’s syncing my hands to what I’m reading that I’m working on at this point. Once my reading progresses to where I can recognize chords and chord progressions quick enough, that’s going to be the next plateau.

Just stick with it, and you can read music anywhere, not just at your instrument. Get in practice where you can. You’ll always be that much better than the day before!

From the sounds of it, most of us never learned how to read music like that, so I guess you’re in good company!

I don’t remember any offhand, by there are some sight reading training apps for your phone.