I’m not sure anyone learns to play entirely on their own. We may not take formal instruction but we watch and listen to what others are doing and ask available player how they play a certain tune or lick.

As a child I had a year of piano lessons, two or three years of violin lessons, a couple of years of trumpet lessons and a few trombone lessons. Several years of abstaining from music and lessons followed. When I decided to learn to accompany myself on guitar, a player I admired told me to get a book with the chords in it and apply the chords to the songs I wanted to sing. That actually worked pretty well as an intro because after learning some basic chords and rhythms, I gravitated towards people who played and I watched pretty carefully.

A couple of years later, I determined to learn properly from a professional teacher. He played Travis style on a Fender Jazzmaster fitted with a Bixby tailpiece and tremello. Not only that but he played and taught from proper charts and wanted me to do the same. Unfortunately, before we made much progress, I was obliged to leave town and abandoned formal lessons for the next 30 years or so. I’d attend the free morning workshops offered each year at the Chicago Folk Festival and I’d stop the featured performers in hallways and get them to show me particular tunes or licks.

Whenever I attended shows by people who could play, I’d sit in the front row or table and carefully watch every move they made. One year a friend and I went to see Gary Davis in Chicago. Between sets he just sat alone in a corner and no one would talk to him but the waitress. We went over and started making conversation and wound up inviting him over to my place for Sunday dinner the next day. Of course he wouldn’t come without his guitar. It happened to be the week of Thanksgiving and he was booked through the next weekend so we invited him for Thanksgiving dinner as well. Brother Davis called his wife in Long Island and she flew in and joined us. Now Gary didn’t really provide instruction and of course we didn’t ask but he wasn’t really comfortable unless he was playing so we got to see, close up, exactly how he made those wonderful licks we’d worked so hard to pick up from records.

Some years back I decided I needed more theory and wanted to play some jazz backup in something akin to a proper fashion. My daughter was studying piano with a woman whose husband was a professional jazz musician, composer and teacher. I asked him if he could recommend a teacher for someone with my informal musical background and he recommended me to a teacher of jazz guitar. That was really the only time I’ve taken any meaningful number of formal guitar lessons. My teacher has since passed on but he left me with the ability to pick up tunes from charts and understand enough theory to get through most of what interests me.

If someone reading this is trying to decide whether or not to take formal lessons… Do it! Don’t hesitate another day. You’ll never be sorry.

      - Mark