Hmm, I learned piano through ear. I've heard thats the best way to learn. I'm not sure if the sax requires a higher skill level, but I've reached the point where I can jump into whatever my friends are playing (jazz). I find sheet music is like riding a bike w/ training wheels, you can still ride, but it lacks in freedom. *peace*

Hopefully someone @ Mahalo will make a video explaining how to read sheet music, but until then, the best way is to take lessons from someone who already knows. It's like learning a different language, but gaining a basic understanding of how to recognize the notes is not that difficult if you put your mind to it.

And yes, unless you can play the sax by ear, it's essential to know how to read music.

At some point in your playing career you will probably want to learn to read sheet music, just to open up another realm of playing. Playing by ear is great, and I wish I could do it. :0) Anyway, learning to play by ear and improv are phenomenal skills to have.

There is a free and basic guide to the notes and fingering guide for the saxophone called Sax Tutor (http://www.saxtutor.co.uk/), which is a small freeware program from the UK, which you'll see when you download it. It includes the scales and finger positioning with MIDI file notes for each. If you like it, I'm sure the programmer would appreciate a donation. :0)

http://www.discoverlearnandplay.com offers music lessons for ~$10/mth, which is based on learning sheet music to progress through your lessons. There are about 20 lessons and each lesson has three sets of three songs and each song has three background tracks. The first background track is played at a slow tempo with a piano note for each note on the sheet so you can more easily learn the notes and the points where you will trip up. The second is at a normal pace, with background music this time, and still with a piano note to show you where to time your notes as you play, and the third is just the background track, and you do not have the piano assistance this time - you have to play the tempo timing correctly yourself. Each lesson progresses through what you learned in the lesson and becoming more challenging as you go. Sheet music isn't hard to read and you'll find if you can commit a one or two hours every day or two, your hand-eye coordination while reading and playing music will develop very quickly!

http://howtoplaysaxophone.org is a free site/forum that you may want to check out as well. There are plenty of tips that really assist a beginning player all the way up through playing improv.

http://saxontheweb.net is a GREAT site for about any general sax question you will every think of asking, from which cool hats and cool shades you need to playing notes, which horns are quality and which are crap, which are good for beginning, where to buy from or rent from, tips for shopping online or e-bay - and for beginning players the tip is not to buy on online unless you know someone that has played for years assisting you. There are a lot of SSO's (saxophone shaped objects) that are sold there that are a big waste of money and only really useful for wall decorations. Sorry to go off topic, but hopefully it will help someone.