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A big part of my learning, not just reading learning, involved immersing myself in the subject matter. My childhood took place as entertainment evolved from books and records to radio shows to TV shows and movies. My Dad and grandparents (his parents) would read to us, not just mechanical reading, but with voice and facial expression. I could picture those stories while they were read to me. I transferred that to my own reading. But my reading is more like a dream than a movie.
The book to radio to TV transition was a series of abrupt changes in imagination for me. One example was The Lone Ranger. Having created the characters in my mind from reading, I found it difficult to properly listen to the radio show because the characters didn't sound right. Then when I saw them on TV, they didn't look right.
Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull was different, though. My Dad read it to us in his inimical fashion so it came alive. Then the movie came out with Neil Diamond's score. I was able to enjoy the reading, viewing and listening (to the soundtrack recording) because the different versions were so close in time.
Then there is how a work is written. Trying to read a Victor Hugo novel with the long and laborious character descriptions instead of character development in the story made required reading in English and French classes challenging. I couldn't immerse myself in them because that isn't the way I experience the world.
Le Petit Prince, on the other hand, was an easy read, not just because it was a children's book, but because it depended on - and described - a young boy's use of imagination. It worked even with its transitions between first, second and third person narrative.
Learning music had this same use of imagination to it. My first memory of learning music is Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. It involves first a narrator describing each instrument, then the character portrayed by that instrument and finally the melody associated with that character. Knowing these these things helped immensely in my music appreciation but my sheet music reading and instrument playing are purely mechanical to this day. Many friends can hear the music by reading the score on paper even if they have never heard the composition before. But learning Peter and the Wolf did help me in hearing individual instruments while listening to a piece.
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