Categories: Education

To Take Guitar Lessons Or Teach Yourself?

Optional instruction is often a factor for those who finally decide to take up that dusty guitar collecting dust in the corner of their room. The extremely inexperienced musician is at a crossroads. Should I enroll in a course or not? Which option should one take, and which should one avoid? Let me tell you, both choices are great ones. Both methods, however, have their illustrious advantages. Let me start by telling you about my background in music and how I came to seek out a teacher while also developing the skills to become my guide.

For the first two years of my guitar-playing career, I taught myself the instrument independently. Due to my enthusiasm and commitment, I achieved great success. However, there was a period when I exhausted my reserves and was confused about what to do next. When I finally reached the end of my rope, I did not hesitate to seek expert guidance. My Bluegrass-legend guitar instructor was one of the best. He had a lot of different qualities, and I needed just what he offered. My favorite quality of my music instructor was his lack of preconceptions. For the time being, though, he helped me reach previously unimagined heights in my playing. How did this guitar prodigy achieve that? The adage “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day” rings true here. You can’t starve a man forever if you teach him to fish, right? This instructor did that for me. He gave me and ingrained in me the greatest blessing a human can have. When I was his student, he showed me how to educate myself. I studied under his tutelage for nearly 2.5 years until I learned everything he could teach me. I guess I ate too fast for his liking. But there was something more that finally drove a wedge between us. My guitar playing was starting to take on a more personal tone. At this point in your playing, no instructor can show you how to improve your unique invention. Here are some things to watch for in either approach to learning music.

Considerations when Choosing a guitar instructor

An agreeable person.
A person with a busy career as a composer.
Someone who never loses their cool.
Someone who isn’t trying to turn you into a child genius.
Someone willing to have an open mind when studying music theory.
Someone who will respect your wishes and not try to shove musical theory down your throat if you are not ready to learn it.
Someone proficient in electric and acoustic guitar playing styles and methods.
A person who can easily switch between several genres of music.
Someone who will only tell you as much as you can handle now.
A creative thinker who can see the big picture and make connections for diverse student needs.
Maybe you’re currently learning guitar, but if you’re not enjoying it, there’s one thing you need to consider: why? When asked, “Do I need guitar lessons or my brand of learning?” Here are some suggestions from someone who has spent most of his educational career self-studying.
Help for the uneducated.

Trust in yourself and know that you can pull this off.
Curiosity, which ignites a hunger for information, will be your guiding light in times of uncertainty.
Everything you need may be found on the web.
Free resources exist for learning guitar. It’s not always necessary to fork over cash.
Intuition can help you sort out reliable sources from those that aren’t.
Don’t beat yourself up for having to begin over. Come hang out with other novice guitarists here!
Take baby steps.
Take things slowly at first and learn the basics.
You probably know someone who is a decent guitarist already so you might ask them for advice.
It’s okay to ask questions; no one will treat you differently because of them.
As I suggested before, you may have been taking lessons for some time and feeling the itch to go out on your own. One surefire indicator of this is when you start developing your tastes in music. It’s time to begin teaching yourself if you’ve reached a point in your musical development where you can imagine a new way of playing a passage, riff, chord, or chord structure. You’ve advanced to the point where you compose brief, unique guitar pieces independently. If you have musical talent and aren’t planning on performing for an audience anytime soon, please be respectful of those who are. Many people possess this rudimentary ability, even if they are unaware of it. It will provide dividends for as long as you care for it.
Pretending you already know something is one of the most effective strategies to learn the subject. Just pretend you’re passing on years’ worth of expertise to someone just learning about the topic. If you can’t say it out loud, at least review the material in your thoughts. If it involves more profound study, like musical theory, you should set aside time to accomplish it. In the same way that committing something to paper permanently fixes it, this does the same thing.

The most significant advantage of self-study is that there is no right or wrong way to learn. Since you aren’t being micromanaged, you can experiment and find out what works best for you. Finally, remember that when intention and desire combine, they can produce outcomes beyond your wildest dreams.

Over eight years and sixteen hours a day, Tennyson Williams has mastered every conceivable guitar style. He’s been in bands that performed everything from punk to funk. He took piano lessons for eight years before deciding to teach himself guitar, and he says he hasn’t regretted his decision. He is driven only by a desire to help people realize their artistic potential via the benefit of his vast musical knowledge. He currently runs GuitArticles, where you can find many tutorials and articles around musical IP. The same website may be accessed at