Guitar - Take Lessons or Teach yourself

[synergy]

Since I noticed that there are a lot of guitar players on this forum, I was just wondering what people on this board prefer - Taking lessons or teaching yourself. I noticed that most good guitarists have taught themselves to play. I just started playing and I chose to teach myself because It seemed better to be able to learn things at my own pace. Anyone else think so?

 

[Istanbul]

I learned it for myself fr two years, and in tha time i could have achieved much more with a teachern ,
i lost myself in tabs , and i cant listen anything out,that is very bad , because , i have to kinda start fronm the beginning.
A teacher will show you the fingersatz, dunno how called in english,and how you hold your pick correctly.
Take a teacher.
So don´t do Tabs they are pure evil.

Besides i would be interested if How MIkael land Peter learned to play, because they are fucking bad good

 

[synergy]

Im pretty sure Mikael taught himself. Thanks for that tab warning, maybe I'll hold off on them for a while.

 

[Judas Pissed]

I taught myself but for the first couple of years couldn't really play much as I only picked up a guitar every now and then (now I play at least 2 hours a day and am in 2 bands). It may have taken longer but I hate having lessons and I can play the way I want.

 

[Id]

I say take a teacher, you'll learn twice as fast because you can learn from the teacher AND by yourself.

 

[fadingessence]

well I took the evil way...taught myself AND used tabs. I'm sure a teacher would have helped, but I don't feel i'm too bad off. I focused entirely on rhythm so my lead playing it weak but I also spend lots of time on my own stuff. The plus side is i've found i'm a better songwriter and FAR better at coming up with ideas on the fly then most people I know. Maybe i'm not up there technically with the lead guys i've played with, but none of them have an ounce of creativity either. I can jam with my drummer on almost any style (yes, even death metal) for 45 minutes and we never repeat anything. And it even makes sense!

Sort of lost what I was getting at but it was something along the lines of being self taught really helps open you up, but if you just self teach yourself songs and learn them perfectly without applying it to what you can do then it doesn't help much.

And tabs arn't "that" evil if you don't overdo it. I do use them a lot but I can still figure stuff out on my own (probably because of music class in school) and I have no problem at all taking something I hear, sitting down, and using it as an idea.

so maybe i'm just really far off but it works for me so.....meh.

 

[Leper_/-\ffinity]

Well, right before I had a teacher, I had been playing for about a year, and I thought I was good, but I actually sucked, I just played lots of tabs, and threw around powerchords left and right, and not to mention, I coudn't play lead worth a squat, now I have had a teacher for about 3 months, and I have improved 100 times more in these three months than I ever had improved in a year of teaching myself. SO there you have it.....and it's not like guitar lessons are hard like school or something, you can always go at your own pace, it's not like your guitar teacher is going to beat your ass if didn't master a scale/chord......

 

[the alumnus]

i'm largely self taught, but i did take a few lessons along the way and they were very valuable. the advantage of lessons is that a teacher will correct bad habits that you might develop. some guitarists don't hold their guitar right or have other basic problems with their playing technique that never go away over the years and end of slowing them down. i have a friend who hold his neck wrong and his fretting hand can't do the things it should.

then again once you get good basics, you can teach yourself anything that you want to learn, which really makes lessons less valuable. most of the basics i learned from watching good guitarists, but i don't regret lessons one bit.

 

[Judas Pissed]

something i noticed was that after i joined a band i rapidly got a lot better, i'm not exactly sure why.

 

[Smitty]

Well, having lessons is MUCH better, but beware: there are soooooo many fucking horrid teachers out there, you have to be extremely careful with who you pick.

Learning from a teacher, you will progress 200 times faster on guitar. Teaching yourself works... but you won't know near as much.

Oh, and it's good to not rely on tabs. Be able to read sheet music, it will help enormously. That's not to say tabs aren't helpful in some situations...

 

[suislidE]

I got my first guitar in February, and I havent taken any lessons yet. I want to, cause I think I'm starting to develop some habits with my fretting hand I shouldnt. Since I THINK I know how to fix it, then I might be ok anyways. I still think taking a couple of lessons would help me iron out those things though. I play about 2 hours a day, and I can play the majority of Opeth's solos. My favs are the main solo from The Funeral Portrait, and the main from Forest of October. Forest is easy, but the one from portrait takes more practice.

 

[suislidE]

Oh, and I dont think tabs are evil... I pretty much started off Opeth tabs, and I still use them. I dont use them as much now because I'm starting to figure out a lot about what chords they like to use, and how they write their solos. Now I can recognize and play some of their rythyms more easily without looking at tabs first. Maybe if I keep on this track I will be able to write my own music, and it will naturally sound like Opeth

 

[Caelum Adustum]

I took lessons for less than a year when I started, but they weren't going anywhere so I stopped. So I've been teaching myself for 6 years and playing by ear. My friend has taken lessons longer than I've been playing and I am able to play with a lot more variety and skill in more than 1 place unlike him. He is very good at classical guitar though, so I think taking lessons really depends on what you want to play. For Metal I think you don't really need them, but for something like classical I think lessons might help a little.

Of course I've used a few websites to find how to sweep pick and all those little things, so if you teach yourself you can do more of what YOU want to do at your own pace, rather than having some guy tell you how to play and stuff like that.

No matter what though, you have to be SERIOUS about your playing, so don't waste your time at parties and shit like that if you want to be good.

 

[Judas Pissed]

No matter what though, you have to be SERIOUS about your playing, so don't waste your time at parties and shit like that if you want to be good.

You have such little free time that you don't go out to practice guitar?

 

[Katabasis]

I say teach yourself. Once you're taught sheet music, scales, etc, etc, by a teacher, it's harder to break free of all that and write something original.
Or that's what I tell myself anyway. Maybe if you found an open-minded enough teacher...but most would probably recoil away from anything too deathy or proggy. *shrugs*
Go with your instinct.