Michael G. answered • 07/19/21
15+ Year Veteran Guitar Instructor
Help you? Yes, of course.
Do you NEED them? Well no, not at all.
There is so much information available nowadays that you can learn to play without a teacher of any kind. That is, if you're willing to spend the time to dig for materials relevant to your level, meander from resource to resource and, using a lot of trial and error, eventually start to build an understanding of technique, theory, and application, you'll get there eventually.
The advantage of a teacher is one of efficiency. Instead of having to:
- Jump back and forth between materials
- Fix bad habits you learned
- Hit walls in your technique that you don't really understand how to "get past"
- Figure out what you need/want to learn next
- Struggle to understand what it is that you need to know in order to meet your musical goals, etc etc
You can get a teacher who will help you navigate and sort out all that unnecessarily messy, frustrating, and time consuming stuff so you can focus on effective practice and stay on track towards proficiency. And having fun, obviously.
But it's more or less your choice to make whether that sort of guidance is valuable enough to you to be worth the money.
As an aside, if you're a very independent learner and feel like you're pretty happy with whatever progress you've already made on your own, you can use lessons as a way to "fill in the gaps." I have had several students over my 15 years who would take a few months of lessons with me out of the year, rather than full time. They would sort of pop in, say "Hey this is what I'm working on, I'm having trouble with this part." Or "I'm having trouble understanding this concept, X youtuber said this, Y youtuber said that, I'm confused."
We'd work through what they were having trouble with, and then they'd stop lessons until they had more questions. They, as people, wanted to sort of steer their own ship and weren't very interested in having someone guide them full time. Which is great. Everyone needs different things and learns a different way, and a good teacher won't have an issue with this.
Food for thought!
