No. But teaching yourself can be extremely frustrating.

no but they help. i taught myself using tabs and chord diagrams, it’s easier if you find songs that you know well and try to imitate what you hear with the chords from the song that you can get online.

All of that depends on you.

I, for one, was capable of teaching myself guitar. Without a teacher, I independently studied music and I am constantly playing, trying to learn new things. I have a passion for it. I’ve dedicated loads of time to it.

Books? Well, books like Guitar for Dummies and other assorted books aimed at the beginner never helped my cause. That doesn’t mean they won’t help you, I’m just saying. The books that helped me are tab books. Conveniently found at my local music store, I bought books that had note for note transcriptions of albums by my favorite artists. Then I studied them, simple as that, and they helped. Using these books, it helps if you can read sheet music, too. Not so much reading which note it is on the staff, but note durations, so that you can more clearly understand the timing. That’s the real trouble with looking up tabs online, is that it’s very hard to read into the timing, though it can be done if it’s a well written tab. I doubt I’ll ever see tabs as elegantly written online as the ones I found for Iron Maiden’s The Trooper. (Picture a tear dripping from my eye here, it was beautiful.)

Anyway, just because I didn’t need any lessons doesn’t mean you don’t. Like I said, it all depends on you.

I taught myself to play guitar, but I had a back ground in playing brass instruments. Lessons help cut out the thought of giving up because you have to go. I found myself set down my guitar for a week or two at a time because I didn’t have anything to learn. A teacher will give you something to strive for. I have to continuously find new music to learn or I stop playing. My biggest help was online chords and tabs. they are vague enough to tell you how to play a song, the thing is you have to know the song to learn it. Tabs do not tell you note length. that is up for you to figure out. For everything to be told to you, you have to learn to read music and buy books.

If you want all the advantages of lessons, but want to work at your own pace (and not spend a fortune), there are great DVD sets that take you through everything from the very basics through complex soloing. I’d been playing more than 20 years when I bought the electric guitar set and I’m amazed at how great it is. Wish these had been available when I was starting. They contain everything you’d learn in years and years of lessons, but cost less than $40 for a complete set. Here are links to the acoustic and electric versions:

http://books-videos-music.musiciansfriend.com/product/Rock-House-Learn-Rock-Acoustic-Guitar-Beginner-Intermediate-Handsof-Steel-DVD-Package?sku=942720

http://books-videos-music.musiciansfriend.com/product/Rock-House-Learn-Rock-Guitar-Beginner-Intermediate-Advanced-Package?sku=942719

Good luck!

The are lot’s of internet courses teaching guitar, check them out
http://www.guitarskilz.net/methods.html

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