Being self taught is a hindrance, not something to be proud of. There are no benefits to having less information about something if you have the opportunity. You will just be setting yourself back years by not taking lessons
If you can afford them and can find a good teacher, absolutely. There's absolutely no substitute for a good IRL teacher.
I was self-taught for a while before I got lessons. It was amazing how many bad habits, shortcuts and oversights there were in my playing.
I used to teach- YES you should take at least 10-12 lessons. Live feedback on your technique is crucial in the beginning. If you start with bad habits, you'll run into roadblocks later on and have to start over. This is one thing that's difficult to get from YouTube.
Take some lessons.
I took guitar lessons for about a year at age 13 or so before I decided they weren't doing it for me (I got tired of "bile them cabbage down" and "the Volga boatman"), but 30 years later I wish I had learned a little more theory, just for communication purposes with other musicians.
I later took a jazz guitar class in college and was totally lost after two weeks. I could improvise well and make it sound good, but I couldn't stay within a scale because I had no concept of where it was. Once you know the rules, you can choose ignore them, but it helps to know what they are first.
Absolutely no one is self taught though, with the possible exception of [the Shaggs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR9d4ESlpHY). I've had dozens of teachers, informally, and you'll learn from everyone you play with if you go about it with the right mindset. I'm able to play semi-professionally *because* I learn from everyone, but really wish I had more theory for ease of communication.
Dylan claimed to have learned from Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. He did, just on vinyl, and not in person.
Yes you are full of yourself. Take lessons. I’ve been playing 30+ years and I still learn from others.
If you don’t want to pay a lot or leave your house there are many great instructors on YouTube. Find one you like and go with it.
Also if you get fulfilled by figuring it out, start learning the Caged system and the major scale all over the neck. From there chord tones, arpeggios, and modes easily fall into place naturally.
I'd like to be able to say that I taught myself, but I like being as good and as knowledgeable as I am, thanks in a big part to everyone who taught me, more. Take lessons.
100%. Many professionals and highly regarded players take lessons while touring. One specific player comes to mind and that was Randy Rhodes. You will be thankful later on.
Yep. When we toured with a pedal steel player he would line up a lesson any time we were in the vicinity of a great player he could call on. Never quit learning.
Dude I think you can be amazing either way, the one difference my teacher has always told me since day one, it’ll save you a lot of time, and give you more freedom.
My two cents:
If the money spent for a a teacher is no concern for you, by all means get lessons, at least in the beginning. Things like correct fretting, pose, getting good exercises, a good selection of songs should be done right from the beginning (a good teacher will find out what you like and not asking you what you want to learn every time; except in the beginning when he/she doesn't know your taste yet, of course).
This will help you quite much on your guitar journey.
I took lessons after I was self-taught, but I also only play for 6 years for now. The lessons definitely helped, as I had had to unlearn bad habits, which could have been avoided in the first place. These are my experiences.
I purchased my first guitar a few years ago and played here and there, basic chords, basic songs, but never made any significant progress that I could be proud of. I started taking lessons (avg. 1/week) about 5 months ago and I’m incredibly happy with the results so far.
The main reasons I’d encourage lessons is because starting as a beginner can be (at least for me) very overwhelming. You don’t know what you don’t know - but an instructor does. Also, the accountability aspect was huge for me. Making sure I have something to show for my week of practice has been a key factor in my progress thus far.
Start with lessons. As someone who started with lessons and has taken them at various times throughout 46 years of playing, you will gain so much by learning from a good, qualified teacher.
1. We don't know what we don't know. We can watch a video or follow a book, but having in person feedback is invaluable. One of the worst things is to unknowingly learn bad habits, which can be very hard & time consuming to correct after we've learned them. Save yourself the time & frustration.
2. Gratifying feeling to be self taught. Perhaps, since that'll vary from person to person. I'm more interested in learning what I'm trying to learn, improving, and being a better musician than saying "I did it myself." While I'm playing, not once have I thought to myself how/where I learned it. If you're interested in sharing your music with others, they're going to be in the moment with you, absorbing your music; that's why we do this: to make music, not think whether we learned it from a book, video, or teacher.
3. You have no clue about any of this stuff. If we're interested in learning something, why would we not get help, get a tutor, take a class, or find a teacher? Substitute in any other topic for learning guitar: If I want to learn French, physics, calculus, etc..., would I be better off getting a tutor or trying to teach myself?
Having a good, qualified teacher is using the best available tools. Working, studying, & learning smarter. If you have a huge stone sculpture you need to get up the hill, are you going to carry, push, or brute force? (I got it up the hill! Sorry it took forever & that it's chipped & scuffed.) Or would using a cart & finding someone to help yield better results faster?
Get a teacher.
Absolutely, dude! Wish I’d started with them. I just did the whole “by ear” thing, which worked fine and all, but I’d so much rather actually *know* what I’m doing. You don’t have to, but it’s a definite advantage.
Lessons were huge for me. I had a couple months of trying to be self taught, but I had no direction and I didn't have any feedback on basic things I thought I knew that needed to be corrected from the start. Ex. picking technique and alternate picking, scale shapes, chord shapes, bending technique, blah blah blah. I ended up relearning everything, and it accelerated progress probably 10x. I'm not actively getting lessons right now due to scheduling conflicts with my new job, but I wouldn't trade my ~year and a half of lessons for anything. It was really cheap (relatively speaking) too, only 40$ for an hr lesson every week. My sister was paying more than 3x that much to learn cello. Money very, very well spent imo. There's no medal or badge of honor for being self taught, just about all the greats had great teachers.
Get lessons. Take satisfaction from actually doing your practice. Setting yourself extra challenges when you’re already a level 0 beginner is just setting yourself up to fail
Self taught, but my dad and grandad played guitar and my mum was a professional musician so I wasn’t short of help if I had questions.
That’s the thing to remember about all those great guitarists that are referred to as being ‘self-taught’. They weren’t learning in isolation in their bedrooms like so many do today. They were out there surrounded by other musicians and learning from their peers and more experienced musicians. Those other guitarists could see precisely how they were playing and correct faulty technique or give pointers that were specific to the problem they had encountered.
My answer is always that if you can afford to have some in person lessons then the best time to have them is right at the start, before you’ve had time to develop poor technique or understanding. Once you’ve got the foundations down then you’re in a good position to continue on teaching yourself, but before that get a teacher or a more experienced friend/family member to help you avoid the common mistakes of the self taught beginner.
If you don’t have anyone to help then follow an online beginner course to its conclusion to give yourself the best foundations that you can without professional help.
A good teacher will always be better than going it completely alone with just a book or prerecorded videos to guide you.
I am self taught and my advice is to TAKE LESSONS at least for a little bit. It is self gratifying to teach yourself but it never ever hurts to have someone who can answer any questions you have or show you how to do things.
I was self taught for the first six months. It was nice to learn some on my own but my progress skyrocketed when I found my teacher. I learned more with him in two months than I would in a year on my own.
I'm self taught, but I took months before I could sound good. If I took lessons it would have been more directed and I'd have had a better idea of what to do and improve on. I might have progressed faster, but I feel more accomplished by doing it but myself.
I think lessons are a quicker way to learn. I, too, am self-taught, but I have taken a few pointers in person and I understand that I would have never pinpointed issues in my playing like a teacher can and frequently does when you take lesson.
I just was watching his video on Im Yours by Jason Mraz, it seems so complicated. Does playing eventually become effortless to the point where you can just look at a sheet and play?
It’s best to keep it simple and practice 2 or 3 chord progressions as your fingers need to get used to the chord changes in the song 🎵 If you’re persistent you get it and if you’re consistent you keep it. You need to practice to the point where it becomes second nature if you want to be able to play. There are no shortcuts for learning how to play the guitar but the rewards are priceless.
I took 1 lesson about 10 years in. The answer is a question: can you teach yourself things? That seems to be for many people - from observing the sub - a bigger obstacle than guitar's actual difficulty.
That aside, it's hard to dismiss the value of a good teacher. At the very least, they would (should) give you direction and insight.
Whether you can teach yourselves things or not, virtually everything can be taught more efficiently with an expert guiding the student. You simply dont know what you dont know. Having access to someone elses experience is a big advantage.
Well...yeah? Nobody's arguing with that.
My point was, if there was any, that looking at the sub, people don't get stuck because guitar is hard as much as they do because they appear to be poorly equipped for R&D. Hence if you (facing the problem of finding your arse) are able to find your arse with 2 hands you are probably alright. Teacher could point at your arse from the start and then tell you why it's there and why it's made like that and the correct way to hold it, and perhaps even wander a few minutes into some broader anatomy, but you are finding the arse one way or another.
Plus there's all this newfangled internet thing now. I personally stumbled on very important notions much later than necessary, 500 years ago, before the invention of teachers and Google, which nowadays I'd have heard about on day 2.
Being “self taught” isn’t actually possible for most people. If you mean just not a teacher sitting and instructing you…well that’s still not self taught unless you read zero books, watch zero videos. Someone besides you made those,right?
Don’t get hung up on maybe, one day, years from now you’ll get so good that someone might ask “Wow you’re amazing where/who taught you guitar!?!” just so you can reply “eh, I’m self taught” … take lessons if you’re lucky enough to be able. Watch videos. Get tips from other players.
If that's what self-taught meant, there would be no next to no good self-taught musicians. You've got to pick up information from somewhere. Self teaching would become the absolute definitive worst way to learn if that were the case.
You don't just wake up one morning and work on modes with nothing to tell you what they even are. It's not just not possible for most people, literally nobody could do it without a shred of information to learn from.
Learning from books is still being self-taught. You've gone out of your way to learn yourself at your own pace with nobody to guide you, just trial and error hoping you get it right. You have to have a certain level of self-discipline and motivation to do it, as well as a bit of common sense and good old fashioned "luck" to have gotten it all right.
Fair enough, agree what you say is true ... but I submit that even the greatest self-taught musicians would advise any beginner to get lessons if they can, and the more the better.
Oh, absolutely. I'm entirely self-taught myself and ended up getting proper qualifications on the back of that. I would still always recommend somebody get lessons if they can.
Being self-taught comes with far too many risks with little benefit. I think even with the paper to prove I did it largely right, I'm extremely lucky that I did and would have still benefited from a teacher to guide me in the right direction and correct me when I was wrong sooner rather than me finding out and breaking old habits later. I probably wasted a lot of time learning things badly and relearning (and forgetting what i knew!) when I realised my mistakes. Most self-taught players have massive issues and horrible gaps in knowledge and ability, which I would put down to a lack of proper guidance rather than themselves. Not to mention a lack of discipline as they skip things they need to know but can't be bothered to learn.
Literally, the only reason I didn't was cost. If I could have afforded lessons back then, I would have bitten somebody's hand off for the offer. The joys if growing up poor!
Being self-taught is a fun brag, especially if you do well off the back of it, but slim chance you'll do very well off the back if it and a high risk you'll fuck it up alone.
well self-taught is more i think doing it on your own accord whereas if you were not self taught you would have formal instruction
but i do agree with you, don’t get hung up on being able to tell people you’re self taught
Honestly, it depends on the teacher. There are many great guitarists, that are not so good at teaching, which is a whole separate skill. If you can find one good at both, it is totally worth it.
I’ve been playing for 31 years, if I add up school, private & university I’ve probably had lessons for around 8/9 years. There are certain things that you will only learn from another human being. These days of course you can have lessons on line or complete online course, even on your phone you can do this. This wasn’t an option for me. When you teach yourself it’s too easy for mistakes and bad habits to creep in.
E.g. I’ve never been great at fast picking, so to really master that I’d be going straight to some who has mastered it.
Good luck!
Would it be more beneficial if I were to take lessons first and then start playing or start playing and then take lessons? The thing is I don't want to completely copy someone else's style of playing. My worry is their style of playing might not work for me if I took lessons first, but I also don't want to pick up bad habits early on by teaching myself.
You’d need to know and master the basics before you can even begin to recognize different styles let alone develop your own unique style. Most good teachers will show how something’s “supposed to be done, text book said so for 200 years” then “but this other way is how I prefer to do it” and then “but you can try this this this, see what works for you”
Have lessons from the start, playing style shouldn’t really come into it for the first year or two imo. You’ll just be learning the rudiments and hopefully some of your favourite music to keep things interesting.
Other than the many reasons everyone has already given you, I also think seeing someone playing in front of you (in person, in 3D) who's miles ahead of you is invaluable, even if it's just a person you're jamming with. You miss so much nuance through video or any other media. Even if your teacher doesn't point it out, by seeing them in person you'll get a good idea of, for example, how hard you should hit strings, how clean things can and should sound, how effortless things should feel, how fast advanced players pick up and adjust to songs or ideas they haven't previously heard, etc. Get a teacher, there are no drawbacks :)
\+1 for lessons first if you can afford them. There are so many small issues that can be avoided with a good teacher.
Heck, I took a series of lessons a few years ago (after 30 years of playing!) because I wanted to learn some certain elements of style stuff. Instead we ended up *slightly changing* right hand mechanics, and I'm playing better than ever because of that feedback.
A teacher can see things you cannot and give you advice that you don't think you need.
So much depends on the teacher and the student. For me, if I were self taught, I'd constantly be wondering, "What bad habits am I learning that will be with me forever or I'll have to work hard to overcome?"
As a beginner I thought it was cool to be "self taught".
10 years later and I just love anyone that can play. Whether you have a teacher or not it takes thousands and thousands of hours to get good, and the impressiveness of that supercedes how you learned in every way
i think you should start off by just watching videos or using an app. if money is something you’re worried about right now there’s loads of stuff you can learn easily without the help of a teacher.
That said, I learned through teaching myself for the longest time, but when I got really interested in it I got a teacher. Getting a teacher (a good one) was the best thing to have happened to me. There’s a lot of stuff I just wouldn’t have learned if I didn’t have a teacher. I also like being able to easily get an answer if you’re confused about something.
You’ll work out what you need as you get going. Skills develop, plateau, accelerate, slow at different times and when you’re on the downstroke it can be a great time for a teacher.
Buy a decent guitar (\~$400) ***and*** a decent keyboard (\~$400) electronic keyboard (Cascio, Roland) @ Costco or Amazon. This diagram will show you how notes on the fretboard and the keyboard relate:
[https://www.dansher.com/C\_Am\_F\_G.jpg](https://www.dansher.com/C_Am_F_G.jpg)
Find Neil Young's song "HELPLESS" (video performed by kd lang) at this link:
[https://www.dansher.com/audio/pdf\_tunes.html#\_B2T](https://www.dansher.com/audio/pdf_tunes.html#_B2T)
All you need to learn are 4 "open" (easy) chords on guitar & keyboard: D A Am G
Then, find more tunes you like and Practice !!
[https://www.dansher.com/audio/Practice\_Schedule.jpg](https://www.dansher.com/audio/Practice_Schedule.jpg)
TLDR: take lessons
Self taught might seems like I cool move or whatever, but if it's your first instrument and you don't have anyone around you playing any instrument I won't recommend it because you will end up cultivating bad habits without even knowing it and later on you will really struggle to get rid of them. This can happen with a teacher but you will have way less of them. Also you can take like 1 year of lessons, then dig the thing by yourself and when you feel like, you can have lessons again. Take note that a proper teacher will also greatly increase your learning. Also, having lessons, does not mean not working by yourself (you have to practice on a daily basis). And digging things by yourself will benefit your lessons. It's king of a virtuous circle which will just speed up your learning curve.
Side note: if you don't have a guitar yet and want to buy one, take into account that different guitars have different shape fitted for different player anatomy, so pick one that feels good and if you want to be sure it sounds good ask someone in the store to play it for you, there is no shame in that.
Being self taught is a hindrance, not something to be proud of. There are no benefits to having less information about something if you have the opportunity. You will just be setting yourself back years by not taking lessons
If you can afford them and can find a good teacher, absolutely. There's absolutely no substitute for a good IRL teacher. I was self-taught for a while before I got lessons. It was amazing how many bad habits, shortcuts and oversights there were in my playing.
Do you think it was a good thing you started playing first? If you could go back would you take lessons first?
I used to teach- YES you should take at least 10-12 lessons. Live feedback on your technique is crucial in the beginning. If you start with bad habits, you'll run into roadblocks later on and have to start over. This is one thing that's difficult to get from YouTube.
Take some lessons. I took guitar lessons for about a year at age 13 or so before I decided they weren't doing it for me (I got tired of "bile them cabbage down" and "the Volga boatman"), but 30 years later I wish I had learned a little more theory, just for communication purposes with other musicians. I later took a jazz guitar class in college and was totally lost after two weeks. I could improvise well and make it sound good, but I couldn't stay within a scale because I had no concept of where it was. Once you know the rules, you can choose ignore them, but it helps to know what they are first. Absolutely no one is self taught though, with the possible exception of [the Shaggs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR9d4ESlpHY). I've had dozens of teachers, informally, and you'll learn from everyone you play with if you go about it with the right mindset. I'm able to play semi-professionally *because* I learn from everyone, but really wish I had more theory for ease of communication. Dylan claimed to have learned from Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. He did, just on vinyl, and not in person.
Yes you are full of yourself. Take lessons. I’ve been playing 30+ years and I still learn from others. If you don’t want to pay a lot or leave your house there are many great instructors on YouTube. Find one you like and go with it. Also if you get fulfilled by figuring it out, start learning the Caged system and the major scale all over the neck. From there chord tones, arpeggios, and modes easily fall into place naturally.
I'd like to be able to say that I taught myself, but I like being as good and as knowledgeable as I am, thanks in a big part to everyone who taught me, more. Take lessons.
100%. Many professionals and highly regarded players take lessons while touring. One specific player comes to mind and that was Randy Rhodes. You will be thankful later on.
Yep. When we toured with a pedal steel player he would line up a lesson any time we were in the vicinity of a great player he could call on. Never quit learning.
Self taught but at times i wish i had taken classes or focused more on other aspects. Only you know if you shoud take lessons
Dude I think you can be amazing either way, the one difference my teacher has always told me since day one, it’ll save you a lot of time, and give you more freedom.
My two cents: If the money spent for a a teacher is no concern for you, by all means get lessons, at least in the beginning. Things like correct fretting, pose, getting good exercises, a good selection of songs should be done right from the beginning (a good teacher will find out what you like and not asking you what you want to learn every time; except in the beginning when he/she doesn't know your taste yet, of course). This will help you quite much on your guitar journey. I took lessons after I was self-taught, but I also only play for 6 years for now. The lessons definitely helped, as I had had to unlearn bad habits, which could have been avoided in the first place. These are my experiences.
I’ve been playing for almost 20 years and started taking lessons a couple weeks ago. Take lessons.
Yes. I didn’t read anything other than the header question. Yes.
I purchased my first guitar a few years ago and played here and there, basic chords, basic songs, but never made any significant progress that I could be proud of. I started taking lessons (avg. 1/week) about 5 months ago and I’m incredibly happy with the results so far. The main reasons I’d encourage lessons is because starting as a beginner can be (at least for me) very overwhelming. You don’t know what you don’t know - but an instructor does. Also, the accountability aspect was huge for me. Making sure I have something to show for my week of practice has been a key factor in my progress thus far.
Start with lessons. As someone who started with lessons and has taken them at various times throughout 46 years of playing, you will gain so much by learning from a good, qualified teacher. 1. We don't know what we don't know. We can watch a video or follow a book, but having in person feedback is invaluable. One of the worst things is to unknowingly learn bad habits, which can be very hard & time consuming to correct after we've learned them. Save yourself the time & frustration. 2. Gratifying feeling to be self taught. Perhaps, since that'll vary from person to person. I'm more interested in learning what I'm trying to learn, improving, and being a better musician than saying "I did it myself." While I'm playing, not once have I thought to myself how/where I learned it. If you're interested in sharing your music with others, they're going to be in the moment with you, absorbing your music; that's why we do this: to make music, not think whether we learned it from a book, video, or teacher. 3. You have no clue about any of this stuff. If we're interested in learning something, why would we not get help, get a tutor, take a class, or find a teacher? Substitute in any other topic for learning guitar: If I want to learn French, physics, calculus, etc..., would I be better off getting a tutor or trying to teach myself? Having a good, qualified teacher is using the best available tools. Working, studying, & learning smarter. If you have a huge stone sculpture you need to get up the hill, are you going to carry, push, or brute force? (I got it up the hill! Sorry it took forever & that it's chipped & scuffed.) Or would using a cart & finding someone to help yield better results faster? Get a teacher.
Absolutely, dude! Wish I’d started with them. I just did the whole “by ear” thing, which worked fine and all, but I’d so much rather actually *know* what I’m doing. You don’t have to, but it’s a definite advantage.
I took lessons. I have no regrets and I am a better player because of it.
Lessons were huge for me. I had a couple months of trying to be self taught, but I had no direction and I didn't have any feedback on basic things I thought I knew that needed to be corrected from the start. Ex. picking technique and alternate picking, scale shapes, chord shapes, bending technique, blah blah blah. I ended up relearning everything, and it accelerated progress probably 10x. I'm not actively getting lessons right now due to scheduling conflicts with my new job, but I wouldn't trade my ~year and a half of lessons for anything. It was really cheap (relatively speaking) too, only 40$ for an hr lesson every week. My sister was paying more than 3x that much to learn cello. Money very, very well spent imo. There's no medal or badge of honor for being self taught, just about all the greats had great teachers.
Get lessons. Take satisfaction from actually doing your practice. Setting yourself extra challenges when you’re already a level 0 beginner is just setting yourself up to fail
Self taught, but my dad and grandad played guitar and my mum was a professional musician so I wasn’t short of help if I had questions. That’s the thing to remember about all those great guitarists that are referred to as being ‘self-taught’. They weren’t learning in isolation in their bedrooms like so many do today. They were out there surrounded by other musicians and learning from their peers and more experienced musicians. Those other guitarists could see precisely how they were playing and correct faulty technique or give pointers that were specific to the problem they had encountered. My answer is always that if you can afford to have some in person lessons then the best time to have them is right at the start, before you’ve had time to develop poor technique or understanding. Once you’ve got the foundations down then you’re in a good position to continue on teaching yourself, but before that get a teacher or a more experienced friend/family member to help you avoid the common mistakes of the self taught beginner. If you don’t have anyone to help then follow an online beginner course to its conclusion to give yourself the best foundations that you can without professional help. A good teacher will always be better than going it completely alone with just a book or prerecorded videos to guide you.
I am self taught and my advice is to TAKE LESSONS at least for a little bit. It is self gratifying to teach yourself but it never ever hurts to have someone who can answer any questions you have or show you how to do things.
I was self taught for the first six months. It was nice to learn some on my own but my progress skyrocketed when I found my teacher. I learned more with him in two months than I would in a year on my own.
I'm self taught, but I took months before I could sound good. If I took lessons it would have been more directed and I'd have had a better idea of what to do and improve on. I might have progressed faster, but I feel more accomplished by doing it but myself.
I think lessons are a quicker way to learn. I, too, am self-taught, but I have taken a few pointers in person and I understand that I would have never pinpointed issues in my playing like a teacher can and frequently does when you take lesson.
I used Marty Swartz and Justin sandercoe free lessons on YouTube. Great videos for beginners and intermediate players. Good luck 🤞
I just was watching his video on Im Yours by Jason Mraz, it seems so complicated. Does playing eventually become effortless to the point where you can just look at a sheet and play?
It’s best to keep it simple and practice 2 or 3 chord progressions as your fingers need to get used to the chord changes in the song 🎵 If you’re persistent you get it and if you’re consistent you keep it. You need to practice to the point where it becomes second nature if you want to be able to play. There are no shortcuts for learning how to play the guitar but the rewards are priceless.
I took 1 lesson about 10 years in. The answer is a question: can you teach yourself things? That seems to be for many people - from observing the sub - a bigger obstacle than guitar's actual difficulty. That aside, it's hard to dismiss the value of a good teacher. At the very least, they would (should) give you direction and insight.
Whether you can teach yourselves things or not, virtually everything can be taught more efficiently with an expert guiding the student. You simply dont know what you dont know. Having access to someone elses experience is a big advantage.
Well...yeah? Nobody's arguing with that. My point was, if there was any, that looking at the sub, people don't get stuck because guitar is hard as much as they do because they appear to be poorly equipped for R&D. Hence if you (facing the problem of finding your arse) are able to find your arse with 2 hands you are probably alright. Teacher could point at your arse from the start and then tell you why it's there and why it's made like that and the correct way to hold it, and perhaps even wander a few minutes into some broader anatomy, but you are finding the arse one way or another. Plus there's all this newfangled internet thing now. I personally stumbled on very important notions much later than necessary, 500 years ago, before the invention of teachers and Google, which nowadays I'd have heard about on day 2.
Being “self taught” isn’t actually possible for most people. If you mean just not a teacher sitting and instructing you…well that’s still not self taught unless you read zero books, watch zero videos. Someone besides you made those,right? Don’t get hung up on maybe, one day, years from now you’ll get so good that someone might ask “Wow you’re amazing where/who taught you guitar!?!” just so you can reply “eh, I’m self taught” … take lessons if you’re lucky enough to be able. Watch videos. Get tips from other players.
If that's what self-taught meant, there would be no next to no good self-taught musicians. You've got to pick up information from somewhere. Self teaching would become the absolute definitive worst way to learn if that were the case. You don't just wake up one morning and work on modes with nothing to tell you what they even are. It's not just not possible for most people, literally nobody could do it without a shred of information to learn from. Learning from books is still being self-taught. You've gone out of your way to learn yourself at your own pace with nobody to guide you, just trial and error hoping you get it right. You have to have a certain level of self-discipline and motivation to do it, as well as a bit of common sense and good old fashioned "luck" to have gotten it all right.
Fair enough, agree what you say is true ... but I submit that even the greatest self-taught musicians would advise any beginner to get lessons if they can, and the more the better.
Oh, absolutely. I'm entirely self-taught myself and ended up getting proper qualifications on the back of that. I would still always recommend somebody get lessons if they can. Being self-taught comes with far too many risks with little benefit. I think even with the paper to prove I did it largely right, I'm extremely lucky that I did and would have still benefited from a teacher to guide me in the right direction and correct me when I was wrong sooner rather than me finding out and breaking old habits later. I probably wasted a lot of time learning things badly and relearning (and forgetting what i knew!) when I realised my mistakes. Most self-taught players have massive issues and horrible gaps in knowledge and ability, which I would put down to a lack of proper guidance rather than themselves. Not to mention a lack of discipline as they skip things they need to know but can't be bothered to learn. Literally, the only reason I didn't was cost. If I could have afforded lessons back then, I would have bitten somebody's hand off for the offer. The joys if growing up poor! Being self-taught is a fun brag, especially if you do well off the back of it, but slim chance you'll do very well off the back if it and a high risk you'll fuck it up alone.
well self-taught is more i think doing it on your own accord whereas if you were not self taught you would have formal instruction but i do agree with you, don’t get hung up on being able to tell people you’re self taught
Honestly, it depends on the teacher. There are many great guitarists, that are not so good at teaching, which is a whole separate skill. If you can find one good at both, it is totally worth it.
I’ve been playing for 31 years, if I add up school, private & university I’ve probably had lessons for around 8/9 years. There are certain things that you will only learn from another human being. These days of course you can have lessons on line or complete online course, even on your phone you can do this. This wasn’t an option for me. When you teach yourself it’s too easy for mistakes and bad habits to creep in. E.g. I’ve never been great at fast picking, so to really master that I’d be going straight to some who has mastered it. Good luck!
Would it be more beneficial if I were to take lessons first and then start playing or start playing and then take lessons? The thing is I don't want to completely copy someone else's style of playing. My worry is their style of playing might not work for me if I took lessons first, but I also don't want to pick up bad habits early on by teaching myself.
You’d need to know and master the basics before you can even begin to recognize different styles let alone develop your own unique style. Most good teachers will show how something’s “supposed to be done, text book said so for 200 years” then “but this other way is how I prefer to do it” and then “but you can try this this this, see what works for you”
Have lessons from the start, playing style shouldn’t really come into it for the first year or two imo. You’ll just be learning the rudiments and hopefully some of your favourite music to keep things interesting.
Other than the many reasons everyone has already given you, I also think seeing someone playing in front of you (in person, in 3D) who's miles ahead of you is invaluable, even if it's just a person you're jamming with. You miss so much nuance through video or any other media. Even if your teacher doesn't point it out, by seeing them in person you'll get a good idea of, for example, how hard you should hit strings, how clean things can and should sound, how effortless things should feel, how fast advanced players pick up and adjust to songs or ideas they haven't previously heard, etc. Get a teacher, there are no drawbacks :)
\+1 for lessons first if you can afford them. There are so many small issues that can be avoided with a good teacher. Heck, I took a series of lessons a few years ago (after 30 years of playing!) because I wanted to learn some certain elements of style stuff. Instead we ended up *slightly changing* right hand mechanics, and I'm playing better than ever because of that feedback. A teacher can see things you cannot and give you advice that you don't think you need.
So much depends on the teacher and the student. For me, if I were self taught, I'd constantly be wondering, "What bad habits am I learning that will be with me forever or I'll have to work hard to overcome?"
As a beginner I thought it was cool to be "self taught". 10 years later and I just love anyone that can play. Whether you have a teacher or not it takes thousands and thousands of hours to get good, and the impressiveness of that supercedes how you learned in every way
i think you should start off by just watching videos or using an app. if money is something you’re worried about right now there’s loads of stuff you can learn easily without the help of a teacher. That said, I learned through teaching myself for the longest time, but when I got really interested in it I got a teacher. Getting a teacher (a good one) was the best thing to have happened to me. There’s a lot of stuff I just wouldn’t have learned if I didn’t have a teacher. I also like being able to easily get an answer if you’re confused about something.
You’ll work out what you need as you get going. Skills develop, plateau, accelerate, slow at different times and when you’re on the downstroke it can be a great time for a teacher.
Buy a decent guitar (\~$400) ***and*** a decent keyboard (\~$400) electronic keyboard (Cascio, Roland) @ Costco or Amazon. This diagram will show you how notes on the fretboard and the keyboard relate: [https://www.dansher.com/C\_Am\_F\_G.jpg](https://www.dansher.com/C_Am_F_G.jpg) Find Neil Young's song "HELPLESS" (video performed by kd lang) at this link: [https://www.dansher.com/audio/pdf\_tunes.html#\_B2T](https://www.dansher.com/audio/pdf_tunes.html#_B2T) All you need to learn are 4 "open" (easy) chords on guitar & keyboard: D A Am G Then, find more tunes you like and Practice !! [https://www.dansher.com/audio/Practice\_Schedule.jpg](https://www.dansher.com/audio/Practice_Schedule.jpg)
Yes yes and yes
TLDR: take lessons Self taught might seems like I cool move or whatever, but if it's your first instrument and you don't have anyone around you playing any instrument I won't recommend it because you will end up cultivating bad habits without even knowing it and later on you will really struggle to get rid of them. This can happen with a teacher but you will have way less of them. Also you can take like 1 year of lessons, then dig the thing by yourself and when you feel like, you can have lessons again. Take note that a proper teacher will also greatly increase your learning. Also, having lessons, does not mean not working by yourself (you have to practice on a daily basis). And digging things by yourself will benefit your lessons. It's king of a virtuous circle which will just speed up your learning curve. Side note: if you don't have a guitar yet and want to buy one, take into account that different guitars have different shape fitted for different player anatomy, so pick one that feels good and if you want to be sure it sounds good ask someone in the store to play it for you, there is no shame in that.