You can read musical notes on sheet music. And you can read the lyrics to songs. But there’s something about music that you can exactly read. It’s auditory, not visual—you’ve got to hear it. But reading still makes a big impact on organized sound.
Reading sheet music is a slightly different experience than reading words. Musical notes are still random marks on a page that can be translated and understood. But the output is musical sounds, not words. However, what are words other than vocalizations of random marks on a page?
I didn’t mean for that to sound as philosophically deep as it may seem. But there’s some truth in that. Maybe reading words and reading music are closer than we think.