Just wondering how many people are self-taught or how many people get lessons, I am self-taught, and im decent for how long I have been playing...

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im about to start playing guitar and im going to teach my self

Kind of self taught, the music class in school didnt teach me any metal exactly . Only a few simple chords.

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i had lessons for two years, but only showed up to about five of them. and didnt listen anyway. and they were for classical guitar.but i consider myself self taught in metal to my current level of playing. if you want me to play greensleeves then im not.

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Self taught..I just used books and the internet.

id say a combinations of both, i took lessons and my teacher was awsome cause instead of teaching me boring ass shit, he taught me whatever i wanted to know about. but i also learned from the web and shit

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internet + a few books+ stealing from friends

Self taught. I occasionally regret it, but fortunately not too often.

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I had a teacher like that, then he got sick and some boring fart replaced him and tought me everything I specifically said I didn't want to know

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im self taught, been playin for like3 years, i think im pretty good for the amount of time ive been playing.but, im about to start lessons to learn theory and techniques(spelling?).mostly just to get better in a better way,if you cant understand that.

Absolutley self-taught. No books, lessons, or internet.

I had lessons for a few months learning Queen songs, Green Day songs and basic scales etc. Self taught mostly though, I've been playing for 3 years. The John Petrucci rock discipline has helped in recent months.

sweat icon tyler!

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Im gonna say both, I took electric guitar for about a year and then I replaced those lessons with classical, but these days I alternate. I do alot of self work on guitar, even though alot of these things I know were taught to me.

Yeah same. I'm taking lessons and I've leaned A LOT from that but I've also learned a lot from this site and other sites.

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I take lessons usually just not recently due to stuff, but im getting back on them


yeah if i didnt take these gutiar lessons i wouldnt of gotten into metal and i wouldnt of been half the guitar player i am now

I first learned just with books and the internet and than started taking lessons. I'm mostly learning blues in the lessons, I really feel like I'm learning A LOT of shit I didn't know. I'm learning classical and metal just by books and mostly the internet. But if I have a question about some metal stuff or classical or somthing my guitar techer is more than glad to help my with that.

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Lessons for first 6 months, 4 years of self-teaching, now as of two months ago i'm having lessons again. Ever seen anyone do scraping sweeps along the strumming area of the strings using the neck of a wine bottle? I have now, my new teacher is badass.

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3 years, 10 months self taught, 2 months of lesson, about a year after i started playing. i learned mostly playing technique than actual playing from the guy, he showed me the proper way to pick, fret stuff, all that happy horseshit, but it helped

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I started playing guitar at the same time as two of my friends. I took lessons, the other two taught it themselves. Now, after two years practicing I notice that I'm far more better then my two friends. We tried to play songs like Mourning Palace from Dimmu together, but couldn't hold the ryhthm, made thousand mistakes and they didn't even know how to hold a pick... Well that tells me that a teacher is necessairy to get fatser going.

Please don't think that I say that every guitarist here who taught it themselves is bad, I only tell you here what happened in my case.

Greetings
Brutur

Ps, don't mind my spelling again, but again it has been a long night
-------->

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Yeah. Despite what some people think, lessons really do make a difference.

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One guy taught me some simple chords and stuff like that. I taught myself to play metal.

self taught

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first two years self taught playing tabs and shit, after that, I took lessons, had lessons for about 6 years now.

I am self-taught, but if you want to teach yourself, you should have a friend show you basic shit, like how to position both hands, how to tremelo pick, and other stuff like that that can hurt you in the long run. I was tremelo picking with my forearm for months before Transient told me that you are supposed to use your wrist. I was also curving my fretting hand for a while before I knew the dangers of that.

I'd say you need a teacher to teach you theory if you want to write leads. In my case, I'll shred like hanneman and use little or no theory and be happy about it.

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but hanneman does know his theory, so he does use it, if you notice, his leads are more structured than kerry's.

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Self taught,probably one of the reasons why I suck

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I'd agree, in most cases. I certainly have moments where I wish I'd taken lessons. However, I think the problem can be traced back to that fact that, when I first picked up guitar and woodshedded the hell out of it over a summer, I found myself at a much higher level than the friends of mine who had been slugging through lessons. For obvious reasons, this made me give up my ideas of taking lessons when it should have just impressed on me how much progress would be possible if I combined my practice ethic with some real knowledge. It also probably would have allowed me to spend less of my practice time erasing mistakes such as those Brutur mentioned and more focused on positive improvement. I guess the allure of being self-taught was too strong at the time. Right now I'd be surprised if I suddenly picked up lessons.

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All that really seems to matter to me about structered leads is the accented and the begging notes, and then you should just use notes that WORK. That's all that really seems to matter as far as structuring, but you have to do a but of messing around before you can truly understand which ones don't work in comparison to certain keys, but you don't even have to know that, you can base it entirely on the natural sound of it minus note names and music theory and you can just understand the enirely physical understanding of the fretboard....and if your lucky you can just slop around like kerry but he still plays incredibly fast.

Self-taught for about 6 years now. I have a background in piano when i was a kid, had lessons for that.....that's about it.

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Self taught for about 2-3 years, mostly blues, I'm about to start lessons basically because I suck harder than a thai whore

self taught...i've been playing for 2years now.

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Self taught. I just started playing other bands songs when I had the basics covered.

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Been playing 4 years. Self taught. I wanna take a few lessons just to get some kind of theory knowledge in there. It takes so long reading through shit on the internet and books etc...It takes half the time if you have a human being explaining it to you and answering your questions.

Would you say that learning the piano helped make it easier to learn to play the guitar? I had 3 years of piano in primary school, so I learnt a fair bit about theory and the like. It has helped make sense of some shit that I would be stumped on now. Despite the gay music that I would play, i'm sure glad that I learnt the piano.

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Both lessons (scales, cords that sort of thing) and Selftought (Pinch Harmonics, sweeps... more stuff that a teacher can't teach... well).

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what is curving the fret hand, and what are the dangers of it? ive never heard anything about this

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I would think that your fret hand wouldn't be as 'stretched' as it should be when playing. The more you can stretch comfortably, the easier it will be to use 3+ notes/string scales.

I also notice that when I stretch my hand for large interval leaps, my thumb is the only part of my fret hand that is touching the (back of the) neck. The only other part is just the fingertips when fretting notes.

I believe a curved hand will allow for easier bend control but your hand ends up bracing against the bottom of the neck, restricting fretboard movement.

Am I close?

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i basically had a couple friends show me a couple maiden and metalica riffs, I think once i mastered seek and destroy, i started teaching mysellf everything i could possibly consume

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self taught unfortunately. when i have money im gonna take lessons though.

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2 and a half years self taught, been in my band for a year. being in a band personally think has improved my guitar playing. i may start lessons soon as im scared that if im doing anything wrong, as in hand positions etc, il regret it later on

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Self taught for 4 years... and i completely agree about playing in a band and improving your skill...

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Self-taught 10 yrs strong. Used books and the internet.

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self taught 3 yrs

self taught, used books, internet and picked up things from others i jammed with or observed. Ive been playing for 3 years this june/july.

self-taught

I started with some books I found in the local library and my dad's old accoustic. The first songs I learned out that book were "amazing grace" & "blowing in the wind" (bob dylan). Those were the times... Thats three years ago since then mostly books & some dvd's, my dad showed me also some basic stuff. Other than that no real lesson.

Maybe I take some lessons in the future but I dont know yet.

I used to take lessons but I quit when I become better than my guitar teacher. Damn, that guy couldn't play for shit. He was good at teaching me how to read music (that's all I really learnt!) which I guess is a useful skill.

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i only took 1 lesson from some kid playing for 10 years. he taught me how to play power chords, and i was like 'whow, so this costs me 10 bucks? fuck you!' and now i'm self taught. though, i'd like to take some classes and learn how to play some neo-classical stuff.

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I'm been playing for myself for about 4-5 years, and I've been in a few bands. I'm currently taking guitar lessons, but it doesn't help me at all. I'm have to take them though, because my school demands it. It's no big deal, but the biggest problem is that I'm better at playing guitar than my teacher. However, I'm going to get a new teacher next term so I hope he'll be better.

I think it is so much easier for me to come up with stuff that actually works/sounds good now that I have had a few lessons. Before it was just random.

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both, had lessons for about 12 years (5 piano, 7 guitar) but i had to learn myself most of the metal repetoire

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i have an awesome teacher he teaches me whatever i'm into i also learn stuff by just playing random stuff

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self-taught, 3.5 years, learned some things from the internet, other things from books. i'm far more interested in trying to make my own stuff than in playing other people's tunes, but i realize it's part of learning.

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self-taught. been playing for about 2.5 years and couldnt agree with you ^more. i also hate pop music and enjoy showing people up at guitar.
my main learning strategy:learn by listening and doing

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I started guitar at school when I was about 11 but didn't enjoy it that much. I moved onto piano and had private lessons for about 4 years. I passed a theory exam and got to grade 5 out of 8 in either AQA or OCR examinations (I can't remember which). I started private guitar lessons with one of my mum's friends whilst in my last year of playing piano, and I think the lessons lasted for about a year. By this time, I'd started to find the music that I liked so I dropped piano and shortly after, guitar. So for almost 4 years now, I've taught myself guitar.

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Self taught for about 3-4 years.

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Im lucky to have a fucking excellent extreme metal guitar tutor who also happens to be a nice guy, hes taught me for about a year now and its done amazing things for my playing, my personal view is that if you get a good tutor who likes the same music than you and is a good player it does improve your playing ALOT, my tutor for example is into morbid, nile, necrophagist, atheist, death and all of the other great death metal bands

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Errr... That attitude will get you nowhere. Listen to pop music, you may learn a thing or two. Listen to Chic. I'll bet you could shred Nile Rogers face off but guarantee you couldn't be as funky as he is on guitar.

And there will always be someone better than you. Especially since your self taught. Be humble and don't be a cocky prick. there is only so much you can understand without knowing theory and stuff, not to mention technique. If your only goal is to "show people up" on the guitar, your playing for the wrong reasons.

But whatever...
I'll get off my soapbox now. jejeje.
Peace!

Nearly 3 years and still going strong, self-taught, and hugely thanks to this site and the internet in general.

I would like to take classical or flamenco at some point but I'm just not looking forward to learning to read music partitures, I've tried to learn many times on my own but never succeeded, tabs all the way for me.

Damn Jsm you are very lucky to have a teacher that's into music like that. Pretty much all of the conventional guitar teachers I can find here scorn metal and the like like the plague. Given they're all old farts that play strictly folklore and classical... There are some local jazz schools too but I'm not interested in learning that, I'd like to learn the meat and bones of flamenco or classical because I think I'd really enjoy incorporating that kind of element into my playing.

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yeah, i was thinking of getting a more classical teacher, to help with the theory and scalic side of things

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Lessons for 10 years. (acoustic for 4, classical for 6), going to do my RMC exam in a month, grade 8 bitches (that means legally able to give lessons). I can't really say anything for self taught. The people i know from where i live that were self taught sound pretty terrible, but i've heard once or twice some really wicked guitarists. Getting taught isnt quite a bad idea imo, depends on the teacher i guess. Mine has been playing for over 40 years, teaching for over 30...he isnt a metal head, but, i can learn to play metal on my own, it isnt rocket science.
Does anyone think that there is a certain point you can get to while playing guitar to which there is no room for improvement? A guitarist's point of elightenment so to speak?

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I'm self taught, which is why I'm rubbish.