Just starting out playing guitar? Then don't do this:

[Toby Walker]

I would strongly recommend a good teacher who can show you not only the proper foundational skills but also give you a necessary plan and important feedback which any beginner will need if they want to avoid creating bad habits that will impede their progress and discourage frustration.

You need the feedback and just as importantly, the ability for the teacher to modify the approach depending on the student's progress. I must emphasize that the beginning guitarist simply cannot do this via YouTube or any canned courses, including mine. FYI, I only teach students that already have the proper fundamentals down. In other words, not beginning students. I have no horse in this race.

Once you’ve developed good habits and get the basics down there are numerous online courses to help you go in whatever direction you decide upon. Along with the good habits, the knowledge, fundamentals and skills you've developed in the beginning will truly help you on your journey. Enjoy. It's a wonderful road!!

[Bridgepin]

Very true Toby. Thanks for posting.

[DCCougar]

Originally Posted by Toby Walker

I would strongly recommend a good teacher who can show you not only the proper foundational skills but also give you a necessary plan and important feedback which any beginner will need if they want to avoid creating bad habits that will impede their progress and discourage frustration.

I agree. BUT, how many of us did that?

(Perhaps only those of us who are any good (myself not included)?

[Toby Walker]

Originally Posted by DCCougar

I agree. BUT, how many of us did that?

(Perhaps only those of us who are any good (myself not included)?

I will admit that when I first started out at 14 years of age I didn't even think of taking formal lessons. Everything I was learning came from watching others. It wasn't until I was around 20 that I decided to get very serious and take some classical and jazz lessons. I had to unlearn some bad habits and learn how to approach the instrument in a more proficient manner.

[Coler]

I really do wish I had had lessons from a good teacher as a younger person. I struggle to find the time for it now.

[TBman]

A "Don't Do This" video of beginners' bad habits would be an interesting project.

[Nymuso]

Originally Posted by TBman

A "Don't Do This" video of beginners' bad habits would be an interesting project.

Film me, I am a case study in bad habits. But they work for me.

[rllink]

I'm seventy two years old. I don't have forty years to teach myself how to play the guitar. But I have a teacher with forty years of guitar playing experience who is feeding it to me as fast as I can swallow it. I'm saying that I'll at least cut that forty years in half with him picking me up and moving me along, maybe even less.

[Robin, Wales]

Great sentiment, but like has been said already, I doubt many of us took that path. I was 13 or so when I was given an old semi-acoustic unbranded archtop. Half a dozen chords from a book later my uncle got me on stage to play with his jug band. After the first song my uncle came over to me and said "I'm the lead guitar and singer. See those two? They are the drummer and bass player. You my boy are the rhythm guitarist. You follow those two. Get it wrong again and you are off".

I'm in my 60s now, and quite frankly, it was the best and only guitar lesson that I have ever had. My uncle has gone now but when I last saw him we had a good laugh about that night. He said that he felt really guilty afterwards and thought that he had put me off playing for life as I was so quiet for the rest of the set. I told him that's because I was bloody concentrating so hard on the drummer and bass player! LOL!!!

[JonPR]

As most of us here seem to be confirming, this is one of those "Do as I say, don't do as I did!" pieces of advice from hindsight.

I agree completely that having a more experienced player (not necessarily a teacher) give you feedback is essential for avoiding bad habits that you might not be aware of when teaching yourself.

But when I began - back in the mid-60s - the guitar was an escape from "school" and "lessons". Music (at age 16) was more important to me than school, where I was fed up being taught things that meant nothing and were of no interest. The guitar was MINE, and even if I'd been offered free lessons I'd have turned them down forcefully. I know what I want to play, and how I want to play. How can anyone teach me how I want to play? How can they know what's in my head? (Yep, arrogant adolescent, that was me...)

In any case, there were no teachers back then who taught folk or blues, the music I was into. It was as plain as day that one taught oneself that kind of music - by ear from records, from friends who also played, from the occasional songbook. It was a vernacular tradition, not an academic one! To have found a teacher able to teach blues guitar would have been like finding someone to teach you how to take drugs, or how to wear your hair long!

But I was lucky in that my three or four closest friends were all guitar players (self-taught, a little ahead of me), and I joined their band. So, almost from the start, my concern wasn't about honing my technique in private (although I did that too); it was about having fun in the gang, and doing gigs when we could. I.e., music as a social activity, not as a display of virtuosity. I was always "good enough" for whatever we were doing, with no compulsion to be a "great guitarist" - just the desire to master the next song I wanted to play.

Naturally, of course, I picked up habits one might describe as "bad" - or at least unorthodox. I held my pick the "wrong" way. I used my middle and ring to fingerpick, not my index and middle. I will admit that those techniques held me back a very small amount. Not quite negligible, but almost. I got round them, but if I'd learned the orthodox way my progress might have been quicker. But, as I say, fast progress was very low on my agenda; I was having fun, and in no hurry.

And maybe if I had met a teacher who I found inspiring - who played like I wanted to play - I might have considered lessons. Otherwise, in my mid-late teens, a "teacher" was (by definition) somebody who made you do boring things that you hated, and might punish you if you did them wrong. So - get a guitar teacher? You cannot be serious!

These days - of course! - things are vastly different. There are countless guitar teachers out there, in all kinds of styles, clamouring for your attention - many of them able to deliver one-on-one lessons remotely on Zoom or whatever. (Hey, I'm even a teacher now myself!) So - with plenty of hindsight of my own - I would also advise a beginner to get a teacher (assuming it's affordable).
The really important point, though, is to make sure the motivation and enthusiasm comes from you. You should never depend on a teacher to motivate you. The student must be in the driving seat; the teacher is the instructor, the guide, the satnav. There's no more depressing thing for a teacher than a student who doesn't practice, because they "can't find the time" or whatever. I'll take their money, but seriously if you don't feel like playing between lessons, then give up! Guitar is not for you!
Lessons are where you are taught stuff. Practice between lessons is where you learn stuff.

[leew3]

Well said Toby. I had the good fortune as a beginner in my early teens to take some lessons from an experienced jazz player who was very patient and kind. He insisted that I learn to read and would give a teaser for the next lesson to get me coming back. I still recall him saying that he'd teach me 'hundreds of chords' the next week before introducing what I now know as a version of the CAGED system of barre chords. I wish my 13 year old self had known what a gift this was and more fully appreciated his teaching. I've developed my own bad habits in the 50+ years since then, but I got a good foundation back in the day.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by leew3

He insisted that I learn to read

Yes!
I learned to read music in school, before I was ever interested in music (it was just one more school subject that everyone did), let alone guitar. Then when I taught myself I found it invaluable. I could learn songs (melodies as well as chords) from songbooks, I could work out guitar parts from piano arrangements, and so on. And of course, I could write down my own first feeble attempts at composition!

I think it should be considered as important for music as learning to read and write is for spoken language. You can learn to play without it, but it's so easy to learn (much easier than learning to read words!) and the benefits are so enormous it's crazy not to.

Guitar, in fact, is the one instrument where it's common for beginners to not learn to read (partly because of tab, partly because so many beginners only play chords anyway, from box diagrams). The only other kind of musician who commonly gets away with being musically illiterate is singers!

[rick-slo]

I think a person who is disciplined and motivated to play well and has a pretty clear focus on he or she wants to play (what types of music) and with all the stuff on the internet can do well without enlisting a guitar teacher for private lessons. Motivation and developing a good ear from listening to music are probably the key things.

That said some lessons from a good teacher and one who has a background in the type of styles you want to play certainly can speed things along.

[airborne1]

A good teacher would definitely be ideal!

With that said, finding one within reasonable travel distance is another thing.

Believe it or not, not everyone has good internet service because of location.

[JackC1]

As a follow up to OP's recommendation to get a guitar teacher... how to find a good teacher as a beginner?

I feel I was very lucky to have had a great first guitar teacher. The approach I took was to look for somebody with a music pedagogy degree (from a decent school), real world experience (playing gigs), and lots of teaching experience (10+ years). I ended up shopping among the music schools near me (pretty much all classical guitarists so I picked one nearest me who also had gigged acoustic guitars). My teacher had the following: masters from UC San Diego, played weddings and corporate events for 5 years before music school, taught at the music school for 15 years, can also play the piano and sing very well (but he only teaches guitar). Later on, I'm had 2 more guitar teachers. One with more street cred than anything else and very guitar-focused.

Now, with 20/20 hindsight, I definitely want a well-rounded music school graduate whose instrument is guitar as your first teacher. Also, I want his realworld experience matches up with what I want to learn. I also want him to have lots of teaching experience (you don't want to be his teaching guinea pig).

Maybe I'm too influenced by my own experience (maybe another teacher might have been just as good, but I wouldn't know). The first teacher helped me set the course to a lifelong learning with good practice methods, expectations (public playing), and technique that'd still with me.