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Self Taught

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(@chasing_time)
Active Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 13
 

I think what you call it is self taugh, my teacher only took my classes at weekends so other 5 days were full of practice

" Stalking is a sign of desperateness, a psychological problem hence a disease."


   
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(@chris-c)
Famed Member
Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 3454
 

I've noticed over the years, though, that things I've had to work out for myself - the barres, the powerchords, transposition, etc - tend to stick in the memory longer than things I've been shown, or taught. And of course there's always the "smug git" factor - nothing more satisfying than nailing something you've been struggling with, especially if you can say "All my own work!"

:D :D :D

Vic

That's exactly right. :D

There's a saying that goes something like this:

  • Tell me and I'll forget

    Show me and I'll understand

    But get me to do it and I'll both understand and remember

  • Maybe there should be a fourth line saying" Work it out for myself and it will be with me for ever

    I love working things out for myself. It's almost a passion. The only downside is that you can sometimes be left with a nagging suspicion that you might have missed something. Perhaps I stumbled on something that works, and then stopped looking - thereby missing something else that works even better?? So I like to also gather information later from other sources, just to check whether my 'discoveries' matched those of others, and then hoover up any mssing bits. :)

    Cheers,

    Chris


       
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    (@almann1979)
    Noble Member
    Joined: 16 years ago
    Posts: 1281
     

    well i aint no decent guitarist but i am a teacher and believe me, these 16 yr old kids who cant be bothered with science soon progress and gain motivation if i can help them work things out for themselves. i dont think it is just music, figuring things out yourself definately sticks all things in that long term memory!

    unfortunately for me, when i try to figure music theory for myself i just get confused - i hate the irony :lol:

    "I like to play that guitar. I have to stare at it while I'm playing it because I'm not very good at playing it."
    Noel Gallagher (who took the words right out of my mouth)


       
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    (@chris-c)
    Famed Member
    Joined: 19 years ago
    Posts: 3454
     

    unfortunately for me, when i try to figure music theory for myself i just get confused - i hate the irony :lol:

    :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

    Life does seem to enjoy playing the comedian on us sometimes...


       
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     Cat
    (@cat)
    Noble Member
    Joined: 16 years ago
    Posts: 1224
     

    these 16 yr old kids who cant be bothered with science soon progress and gain motivation if i can help them work things out for themselves.

    PLEASE tell me HOW???

    No kiddin'.

    Cat

    "Feel what you play...play what you feel!"


       
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     Ragz
    (@ragz)
    Active Member
    Joined: 16 years ago
    Posts: 13
     

    I too haven't had a formal lesson in how to play a guitar either.
    Personally i would love some, just to try and find some direction with how to help myself grow as a guitarist and musician in general.
    But unfortunately they truly are expensive. I don't know how much they cost in my home land (England), but over in the USA, i know that where i'm currently living, the costs are averaging about $30-40 USD for 30 minutes of lesson time.
    Some of the teachers round here are charging $100 USD and hour.
    Almost every one will make you sign up for a months lessons in advance too. So you're shelling out at least $120 USD a month in guitar lessons. That's only if you want 4 half hour lessons each month. To me that's just about enough time to do a warmup, lol (i feel a possible tangent coming on, so i'm going to nip that in the bud right now and save it all for another thread, hehe).

    So instead, i teach myself at home. Much to the chagrin of my wife and kids sometimes, as i'm sure they probably get sick of me playing the same riff over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, ad infinitum.
    But they do like to hear me play when i get things sorted after much practicing.

    There's nothing like the feeling of figuring something out by playing and then realising that you can apply that riff to several other songs that all used it in one way or another. But it feels like you discovered a new way to play it, even after you realise that other bands/artists have used the same riff that you found. :) I've "discovered" several riffs that when played a certain way sound exactly like a song i know or a song i've heard. Do i know if they're exactly the same? Nope, but to me, as long it sounds good, i could care less. In my head i discovered it first :note1: :note2: :lol: 8)
    If there was one thing in my past that i could change. It would be change my putting down of my guitar when i was a teenager. I should've carried on playing and practicing back then. That's the only thing i can honestly say i regret about my life so far (i'm in my mid 30's now).


       
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     Cat
    (@cat)
    Noble Member
    Joined: 16 years ago
    Posts: 1224
     

    If there was one thing in my past that i could change. It would be change my putting down of my guitar when i was a teenager. I should've carried on playing and practicing back then. That's the only thing i can honestly say i regret about my life so far (i'm in my mid 30's now).

    C'mon! Could have didn't...so it couldn't have! Look at where yer at right now: today. If you are happy with that, then it's cool you did what you did because we're all the sum of our parts!

    So don't sweat it. I got more than twenty years on you and it'd be an understatement to say that I've learned a bit since my own mid-30's! (Hey, Chris...what's a 30-something got to kvetch about, huh??? :lol: )

    DON'T sweat it! Just get on with it! Learn from it! Write about it! Looking back and fretting about it (without a guitar) won't help even in the least bit.

    Cat

    "Feel what you play...play what you feel!"


       
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    (@ness-k)
    Estimable Member
    Joined: 17 years ago
    Posts: 155
    Topic starter  

    I can easily say saving up, buying, and teaching myself to play the guitar is one of the absolutely best things i've ever done with my life.

    "The Beauty of Music is my Sanity. Without it, I would simply lose my gravity, and blow away with the breeze." - Ness K(Aka Matt Harris)


       
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    (@grungesunset)
    Honorable Member
    Joined: 17 years ago
    Posts: 342
     

    I was a big advocate of being self taught. My attitude quickly changed when I took lessons though. While I agree you learn things faster when you work at it than if just shown, this logic falls apart when you talk about a guitar. If a teacher shows you an F chord and you get it right away then you are the best guitarist in the world and deserve a medal. To be fair, by the time I took my lessons I had all my chords down but at the end of the lesson there would be something to sit at home to work at for the next week and then the next lesson I'd build from there.

    Mostly my teacher's exercises were to build speed, efficiency and accuracy more than anything. He also taught me that if you try a riff, technique or whatever and have to practice it 1,000,000 times and are still getting wrong, it is unlikely that the 1,000,001th time you'll get it. Probably, you are doing something wrong or are not playing the piece in the most efficient way.

    I think that's what makes teachers good at what they do. They show you what to practice it and how to practice it which makes for better practice. Ultimately, the better you practice, the less you have to work at something to get it down.

    This may not be everyone's experience but I know when I started lessons that once my teacher showed me exercises and even better fingers and what not that my skills improved faster than they ever had practicing alone.

    "In what, twisted universe does mastering Eddie Van Halen's two handed arpeggio technique count as ABSOLUTELY NOTHING?!" - Dr Gregory House


       
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    (@minotaur)
    Noble Member
    Joined: 16 years ago
    Posts: 1089
     

    There's a lot to be said for being self-taught, especially when you make a couple of breakthroughs like I did today. :D

    I took lessons for about 6 months but I was getting burned out. As much as I liked my teacher, and as good a musician as he is, I wasn't getting a whole lot of satisfaction out of lessons.

    For now I'm going on my own and working on some songs I want to learn. As it turns out, they have very different techniques and strumming patterns. Right now I'm a rhythm guy.

    Having said that, I spent about 6 hours today, with a few breaks, working out a few bugs that were... well.. bugging me. I pounded away and got it. What I learned is to clear my mind and open it, and listen.

    I'm probably going to go back to lessons sometime in the not-too distant future, at another studio, because there are things you just need someone to show you.

    It is difficult to answer when one does not understand the question.


       
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     Cat
    (@cat)
    Noble Member
    Joined: 16 years ago
    Posts: 1224
     

    G'day, Minotaur...yer pretty much on the money. I'll look for more instructive input when I get into the "maybe I'm stuck where I am" mode. But it's undeniable (to my own look at it) that the more creative guitarists are self-taught.

    Cat

    "Feel what you play...play what you feel!"


       
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     cnev
    (@cnev)
    Famed Member
    Joined: 21 years ago
    Posts: 4459
     

    This is an interesting topic and since I've done both I guess I'm somewhat qualified to reply.

    So you are self taught - What does that mean? And in the end what does it matter? What's the difference between a teacher showing you how to finger a chord or seeing a picture in a book or online?

    This is another one of those guitarists things that people seem to use as some kind of badge of honor, but to me it makes no sense. Should I feel less of a guitarist because I take lessons? I've met several guitarists that after I say i take lessons have to throw in the comment.."I never took any lessons I was self taught" Whoopty freakin doo...who cares.

    My lessons are a bit different than most peoples I do not work on theory or sight reading at this point it's mostly him tabbing songs and I learn them. I don't even play them very much for him unless I have a difficult passage. It mostly just comes down to me practicing the song..a teacher can't help with that.

    There's nothing wrong with learning things on your own the most recent example for me was pinch harmonics. It came up in a couple songs I was learning and I really had never practiced the technique before that. So during my lesson we spend all of about 2 minutes on showing me the technique and then it was up to me to work on it to perfect it.

    I could have just looked online and found the same instruction in an article or on a Youtube lesson. Would learning it that way make a difference?

    I kind of disagree with things that you work out on your own you remember better. I beleive it has more to do with whether you really ever learned it or not regardless of the mechanism you used. I can forget stuff just as easily if I learned it "myself" vs if it was shown to me by my teacher

    Cat - I would have to say I disagree with your statement about creative guitarists being all self taught. That's like saying if I learn theory it'll hinder my creativity.

    It's not how you get there it's whether you get there or not so if being a self taught gets you there cool but that doesn't make it any better than getting there via lessons.

    "It's all about stickin it to the man!"
    It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll!


       
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     Cat
    (@cat)
    Noble Member
    Joined: 16 years ago
    Posts: 1224
     

    But it's undeniable (to my own look at it) that the more creative guitarists are self-taught. Cat

    Like I said: "to MY own look at it"!!!

    And about those "pinch harmonics" you mentioned. Nope...you can't find any info about it anywhere that I can see...EXCEPT on the thread that Yours Truly started about it.

    Learnin' iz learnin'.

    Cat

    "Feel what you play...play what you feel!"


       
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    (@rahul)
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    Joined: 18 years ago
    Posts: 2736
     

    I had a Q:

    Today you can get good guitar learning DVDs for almost all styles (classical, rock, flamenco)

    Will you call learning from a DVD being self taught ?


       
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    (@davidhodge)
    Member
    Joined: 16 years ago
    Posts: 4472
     

    "Self-taught" is pretty much a "catch-all" phrase. Basically it's come to mean "I've learned without taking a one-on-one private lesson, or a group lesson with a teacher." If you read through the thread, you'll read that many of our self-taught folks here have used books, DVDs and online tutorials of some sorts. At the very least, they have used song charts and guitar tablatures. Plus, there's all that learning from either playing with or watching other guitarists. Even the self-taught heros of the past learned from listening to recordings and then trying to copy what they heard.

    So "self-taught," technically speaking at least, is a very misleading phrase. But, then again, so are most of the labels we use to cover huge categories. It's not so much about what actually happened or what is as much as it's how someone wants to identify something or how one wants to identify oneself.

    Hope this helps, Rahul.

    Now, back to the topic at hand!

    Peace


       
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