<p>I heard it's pretty easy to self-teach? </p>
<p>What kind of guitar should I get? A cheap, beginner one or a quality one? </p>
<p>How do I go about teaching myself? Where do I start?</p>
<p>There are certainly a lot of self-taught guitarists out there and some of them play quite well. Even a year or two with a good teacher can help you make much faster progress. Lessons can also help keep you from picking up bad playing habits that can be really hard to break later and can sometimes lead to repetitive motion injuries.</p>
<p>There are a lot of folks out there who would love to sell you a beginner guitar for under $100 that will make learning a lot harder than it has to be. Many people who try to start with a guitar like this give up after a couple of weeks because it is no fun at all to try to make music when you are spending most of your time fighting the instrument. Even if you do find something half-playable in this price range and stick with it, you will be looking to upgrade six months later because it will not be making the sound you want. I have a friend who calls these GSO’s for Guitar-Shaped Objects.</p>
<p>Are you looking for a classical, a steel-string acoustic or an electric guitar? There are decent options for a beginner starting around $200 or so (a case will cost extra and is a very good investment). If you can afford $450 or $500 you can get an instrument that you can grow with for many years.</p>
<p>There are a lot of different playing styles out there. Do you have a particular style or a particular artist that got you interested in starting to play on your own? What kind of music do you want to be able to play? There are a lot of options out there for getting started and it helps to know what you have in mind before suggesting any of them.</p>
<p>We highly recommend Alvarez guitars for beginners. They are only about $100. Our daughter’s teacher, who is extremely discriminating about guitars, was shocked to hear what this guitar actually was. He told our daughter that perhaps her technique was all the better for having to overcome the limitations of this first guitar (an alternative view, or perhaps he was just making lemonade out of lemons). Anyway, from that $100 she jumped all the way up to a luthier-made, quite expensive guitar, after a few years, and didn’t look back.</p>
<p>It is much better to have a teacher. If money is an issue, then you can see the teacher every two weeks.</p>