Well, I always have a problem remembering what I learned by ear. I mean, I practice a lot of etudes and songs. So I always for every song I play, write it out on staff paper. In fact, when I learn a song from ear, I resort to what I learned in aural dictation/sight singing classes. You write the chords first and write what position the chord is in THEN go in and write out the voices starting with the bass. And you don't attempt to do the entire song in one listen, you do as much as you can handle in one listen, then you continue that until you get the entire thing. That approach to me seems the best way of combining the ear and the written note. Plus having ear training programs is very helpful. My favourite one is MacGammut. I still to this day use it (although, not as much as when I was in school do to lack of time).
But, ideally you want to have both a trained ear (if you have perfect pitch, that's a plus) and an ability to read.
But, ideally you want to have both a trained ear (if you have perfect pitch, that's a plus) and an ability to read.
