We are the music makers - producers?

How much music experience do you guys have- stuff like reading music, being proficient on an instrument?

I'm completely self-taught. I've played guitar for 25 years, and dabbled in other instruments. I'm now a pretty good piano player, and a reasonable bass player. I can fake it on drums and could once fake it on the saxophone. I have never been able to read music. It simply won't stay in my brain. But I can play a lot of stuff by ear. (except Jazz - I can't figure out how that works)
I wrote a lot of songs over the years - there was always a tune in my head for years, but these days the muse has deserted me. I learned to produce music as a means to get those tunes out of my head and into a more permanent medium, sometimes racing against my memory. I usually have something fully formed in my head - the whole arrangement - and the challenge for me is to reproduce the sound in my head before I've forgotten it. I use Sonar 8.5 these days (paid for) because when I started pirate copies of its predecessor Cakewalk 8 were the easiest thing to get hold of, and it was easier to stick with the same product than learn something else.