How to read music when you can't

Sorry about the link; try this: http://www.solfege.org/.

Oh yeah-- the training exercises at http://www.musictheory.net/ have helped me lots when I get rusty. There's specific exercises for http://www.musictheory.net/trainers/html/id90_en.html and http://www.musictheory.net/trainers/html/id91_en.html by ear, http://www.musictheory.net/trainers/html/id82_en.html, http://www.musictheory.net/trainers/html/id83_en.html, and even how all that looks relative to a http://www.musictheory.net/trainers/html/id80_en.html, http://www.musictheory.net/trainers/html/id81_en.html, or http://www.musictheory.net/trainers/html/id86_en.html.

Just a totally random suggestion here, but difficulties reading music, along with math difficulties and a tendency to have good language skills, are something associated with learning disabilities like http://www.dyscalculia.org/calc.html. I've taken music lessons on several instruments since childhood, and still the best I can do is tell you what the names of the notes are. For me it's not so much a problem with the inherent concepts of music - rhythm, etc., but more with making sense of the written form. I think of it somewhat along the lines of dyslexia and so on...parts of reading music might make sense, but you have problems putting the whole thing together into anything coherent.

Practice, eh? Nuts.

my mind would start doing contortions, trying to understand why this particular dot meant this particular sound. And furthermore, why this particular sound was correct, but this other sound isn't. It's all completely arbitrary. Like any written language, the connection between the shapes that appear on the paper and what's actually said is something that's been made up. That's the reason it doesn't immediately "click"; there's no underlying relationship there to click. All there is, is a bunch of arbitrary rules that people already "in the know" have agreed to apply, and those are what you have to learn, piece by piece by inexorably arbitrary piece, just like you learned that when you see A you say "eh". There are rough analogues to letters, words and sentences but they're rough analogs. Music is not speech, and what you already know about reading English is going to be of very little use to you as you learn sight-reading. Don't expect existing language competence to help. It won't, and expecting it to will discourage you from doing the endless rote work that does help. So you need to start simple, just as if you were a kid being taught their ABCs, and do the work. There really is no shortcut. Closest thing there is to a shortcut is getting taught by somebody who understands both you and the material.

I have a lot of trouble reading music because I have a math disability. It also prevents me from learning foreign languages easily. Strangely, these things all involve the same part of the brain.

I agree with other posters that it is a learned skill, not an innate ability. I'll add that when I learned to sight read, I found a deck of flash cards like http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000E3WW7M/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ to be very helpful. But absolutely, the best way to learn is with formal instruction. Lots of piano teachers give private lessons to adults these days.

really this post is just absurd. you can't read music because you have never learnt to. Music is easier to 'read' than english writing. ie the set fo axioms/rules/notational logic that translate a series of notes to say a series of piano key presses is much simpler than the rules for converting these swiggly lines(english writing) into vocalisations... Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit...

If you're only seeing it once a week in church, that's your problem right there. You need time to practice, and an understanding of the basics. Buy a children's piano primer and start teaching yourself the rules. Try sitting down with a pen and paper and working your way through short pieces of music. This will be incredibly time consuming at first. For every single note there'll be a thought process like: "Hmm, what's this note? It's a hollow circle with no sticks coming off it, so I hold it for four beats. It's 1... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6 above middle C, so I guess it's a B. Were there any sharps or flats mentioned at the start of the piece? No? Okay, so it's a a plain old B and I hold it for four beats. Okay, I've written that down. Next note!" Then after time, you'll become more proficient at it and it will condense itself to: "Mid-stave, whole note in C Major. That's a four beat B. NEXT!" Which will eventually become: "Beeee!" Think of it like a child trying to read the word 'class'. At first they'll go "Cuh-luh-ah-suh-suh. Culuasusu. Class!" After more practice they'll do the first part quickly in their head, then just say "Class!" After enough practice, they won't be doing Culuasusu even in their heads. They'll just see the word and think 'Class'. The important thing is having somebody teach them how to say each letter and to explain some of the rules, like how an 'E' at the end changes 'Hat' to 'Hate' not 'Hattie'. Once they've got the basics, you can just take 'em to the library and leave 'em to it.