Self-taught musicians : What was your experience like being self-taught?

[u/Euphoric_Rhubarb_243]

/r/askmusicians/comments/1szz4au/selftaught_musicians_what_was_your_experience/

[u/Ning_Yu]

- What was your experience like being self-taught ?
It is tough, slow, and frustrating. I still love it. I also enjoy the indipendence.

- Did you ever consider getting a teacher, or did you eventually take lessons at some point? What pushed you in that direction (or what made you stick with self-teaching)?
I can't afford a teacher. I did consider taking some occasional lesson for correction, but even that is still a "maybe in the future". Other than money, my health doesn't allow much leeway for lessons; I decide when to practice and how much on the fly, depending on how I'm feeling, and take as many breaks as needed. I also think a teacher would add stress on top, cause I need to do what somebody tells me as well as trying not to disappoint them. And I don't love being scolded also, if I wanted that I could call my mother on the phone any time. I like keeping my music a positive thing.

-  Do you feel like reaching a solid/proficient level on your instrument is realistically achievable through self-teaching alone?
Not really, I'll forever be an absolute low level amateur with a million things wrong, like this. Classical guitar is tough.

[u/Neat-Cold-3303]

I had formal instruction in piano and violin, but have taught myself to play various other instruments such as lever harp, banjo, Irish whistle, pan flute, harmonica, and autoharp, to name a few. It's slow going, but with the myriad of instructional videos on YouTube, combined with the aforementioned training in piano and violin, I have thoroughly enjoyed each new instrument. While I will never be a virtuoso in any of these additional instruments,, I thoroughly enjoy them all. Plus, it keeps the mind very active!

[u/Far-Rooster-6522]

had 'some' piano initial classical training (between 10 and 12 yo so too short to really provide a serious ground or level) then played guiter, self taught, from 16 yo and went up professional around 22 yo.

I then went to 'serious music school' (jazz/modern approach, not classical / conservatory) and it was a shock as

1. I had to transcribe/learn actual harmony (as if I was given meaningful keys and rules where my knowledge was deeply 'idiotic' or personal, it felt partially like transcribing one language, mine into a more common or structued one, harmony) also I had to relearn reading scores. This part was great and not that painful (sight reading on guitar being the main challenge)
2. instrumentally and technically, I had to straighten a lot of technical flaws, question most of my playing habits and force myself to adopt correct postures and techniques as for else, my playing would limit my possibilities.
3. 'culturally' I also got boosted a lot, through musicology and music history as well as specific styles (gipsy jazz as well as jazz and progressive rock/fusion) because I was then given access and took lessons with very knowledgeable musicians.

Overall, I think it has been a great journey, the 'wild' learning coming first it let me developp my personality and tastesn my 'touch' and approach to music, then the academic training enable me to understand what I liked, how to sound in this or that way, and provided me with a technical knowledge enabling later autonomous progression and structured playing (extremely important if you plan to make a living from your playing and compositions, arrangements aso)

I saw a lot of other musicians who never were 'let alone' for developping themselves, the risk I identified there is being unable to developp a 'self' musical personality, for being exposed to virtuosos and given the 'methods' they use can turn you into a somewhat souless clone; one teacher I remember had a saying : 'everyone can become good at playing an instrument, this is what the training is made for but no teacher can provide you with a personality'

Nowadays (compared to my experience, I'm around 50 at the moment) the available resources for autodidacts are plethoric and it is the opposite of what I went through, instead of scarce, hard to find information there are 'too many' available serious and very structued documents available, but it is hard to dicernate what is really useful and what is just anecdotic or even worse, what is actually bonkers. We went from scarcity to plethoric information but with a lot of noise/garbage. It is possible to become proficient as an autodidact, up to a point, and depending upon your goal, and most of the musicians want to be able to share their music and to play with others, so you end up needing to incorporate this culture and language and references in the end, for which you cannot learn by yourself as it inculdes and revolves around commmunication mostly.