just a mention about taking lessons... If you start out taking lessons and stick with it.. you will go farther faster.. If the teacher know what they are doing.   The lessons will be laid out so that you will develop  your knowledge and dexterity in a progressive manner.  you won't be developing any bad habits (hopefully ),.. that would slow you down  when attempting very hard passages of music.   If you follow the course programs you would learn theory along with music and playing skill.. 

 yes there are people that get  very  good without lessons, but very few .. Mainly because they don't know how or what comes next in their need for development.

I picked up my first guitar when I was 19.  I learned about six chords and stopped there.  I was more about writing.  Always a private person and never interested in learning how play other's music stunted my growth.  The next seven or eight years was a love/hate relationship, selling a guitar, buying another, smashing a guitar, buying two more. When I was about 28, I bought a nice Guild guitar.  Amazed at how a good guitar can make all the difference in the world, I put something like 15 pieces to music within a couple of days and thought, 'well, that's kinda nice'.  So I did the next best thing for experience and started playing at the bars.  Soon after I bought my first digital 8 track recorder. 

I can always hear music in my head but I can't always bring it to fruition.  I've been lucky to play with some other small bands and that helped me out immensely but my style and direction is not always a very popular one so I end up going right back to me in a room all by myself.  The problem stems in being guitar illiterate and software illiterate so when wanting to actually make something serious and not just on-the-whim, I fall short.

I've definitely improved with my guitar style but I'm still a long way from being remotely decent.  Someday, after I master this Chinese language, I think I'll take some lessons.

Self taught bass, piano , guitar, and ukulele. Had classical training on cello, but learned a lot from friends/ experience

Once you learn one insturment and music theory, all the others you have access to fall into place...

I started bass and singing and then started guitar and drums when i was like 12 and i still haven't taken any lessons-i find them unnecessary and expensive...I noticed that strings break alot when you don't know what you're doing but now strings last me forever

I tought my self to play guitar at 11 as well! (Hey man pink floyd rocks lol "dark side of the moon"

Yeah i had my brother teach me at about 11 or 12 and then sorta learned the rest on my own.ill be getting some more lessons fairly soon.

I played bass for around 4 years before I got lessons, mainly for theory and such, now music to me "makes sense"  I can take a listen to the music (or look at the notes in the song) and have an idea where it's "going" and improvise and things, I'd also recommend lessons for the more advanced skills maybe, things such as double thumbing and sweep picking.  I'd definitely recommend getting lessons unless you are a musical prodigy!.

I'm thinking of picking up a banjo, though no place here seems to do lessons

I am self taught on everything I play except for drums. I think its far more interesting for me to play that way. I'm also pretty much self taught in recording. A friend helped to get me started though.

I'm thinking of picking up a banjo, though no place here seems to do lessons

Banjo is relatively easy to play because of it's open tuning. You could probably get the hang of it if you checked out a book, a website, etc... for chords.

I have been playing Guitar for about 35 years and am 100% self taught. I have always been proud of being self taught, but more recently I have been wishing I had incorporated some formal training at some point in my life. More specifically, I wish I was able to read music - i feel limited by not being able to. I recently tried this awesome system to help me learn..check it out!..


Yea cool......
Oo! clickbank.net I see......dodgy stuff, this is a link to a site that... summarized your site for me.....looks...dodgy.....and then read the comments left by members at the bottom of the page....wow totally dodgy!!!
You should check this out    
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/hop.clickbank.net/summary/

Cheers
Kings
(The androgynous.....both Mod and Rocker)

Wait, wow... Have I missed something???? IMPOSTER??? Whats going on? Is this a case of a stolen identity or a very elaborate illusion?? Either way A+ on bumping a 2 year old thread....

Your on early or is it late? So how come Ninjaguy and silentslaughter have the same birthday and you dont ?
You dont get a cake that way 
Happy Birthday Jackson in any case. You haven't got any songs so I had to do it this way.
Have a real good one.....and it's good to see you around.

The 'impostor' above is living a lie, he's going around spamming a link to a very vicious site that is know to automatically install malware as you open the page.......so I took it out.

IS MY BIRTHDAY NOT RIGHT!?!?!?!?!
(thanks for the wishes btw I have the most awesome FREE studio setup now...)
SHUN THE IMPOSTER

I was primarily self taught for about 9 years.  But I found that in order to get to the next level of musicianship I needed to seek out the experience of professionals for private lessons.

I'm pretty much self taught on everything.  Guitar, Bass, Drums, Vocals etc.  I took a few lessons when I was 19 or so but other than learning "Stairway to Heaven" I got very little out of them.  "Self Taught" is somewhat of a bad description.  I learned much from band members over the years.  Many thanks to those who helped me along the way. For Vocals my Grandma Mary for the full volume renditions of "Danny Boy" while doing laundry on Sunday afternoon. Chris G. for pointers on drums,  mabye some day I'll play half as well. Bill H. for turning me on to blues harmonica, Shawn S. and Carl S. for southern rock lead guitar licks and many more nameless "teachers" over the years.  For me, the bands were my best and most treasured learning rescorces.  I actually tried to not learn a lot of other peoples songs note for note so I would develop my own sound and style. Hopefully it paid off.  Rock on!...Skunk

Wow this is a very interesting thread. If this looks like an extremely long post, you may jump down to the last paragraph.

I started taking classical violin lessons when I was 3 at the same time as my sister (she was 4). She always loved to sing, so my parents wanted to find her an instrument. They chose the violin because we couldn't afford a piano. I got jealous so I started too. My sister and I became the only musicians in our family. My dad liked rock-and-roll and my mom hated it, so my sister had some very mixed feelings. Neither of my parents knew anything about classical music. When I was twelve, I got bored of classical music and started playing folk music, which is still my primary style. My sister kind of went in a different direction. She plays professionally now. Anyway, I took "fiddle" lessons for about 6 months until I surpassed the talents of my teacher (which is not saying much), who started taking me to contests to make money. It was around this time that I decided to learn the banjo. I took banjo lessons for 1 year at a folk school, the bluegrass style picking. This ends my lessons. I did some more fiddle/banjo contests and decided to end that. I saw the same people at every contest I went to. I feel that it should be noted that my only experiences with bluegrass were only related to the contests. It was not a style that I really enjoyed playing regularly, and I eventually came to realize that. I found that the most enjoyment for me came from playing my own myriad of styles that have been categorized as a mixture of irish, new england, and french canadian. When I stopped my banjo lessons, I started teaching myself every stringed instrument I could get my hands on. This included the tenor banjo, guitar (steel string, 12 string, classical, tenor, and electric), electric bass, viola, dulcimer, and mandolin. Additionally, I learned keyboard, accordion, and penny-whistle.

To sum up everything, I took violin lessons from age 3 to age 12 and had one year of banjo lessons when I was 12. Everything else, I have learned on my own. I feel very strongly that taking violin lessons (especially at such a young age) has played a huge part in establishing a firm base for education and growth as a musician. While classical training taught me nothing about improvisation or creativity, it did teach me proper posture, and all of the other technical aspects of violin playing (which I certainly would have overlooked if I tried to teach myself). Also, while my classical training completely overlooked the idea of learning by ear, I did learn to read music and sight-read. I feel like my classical training has given me the ability to pick up other instruments faster by applying techniques that I used when I was learning the violin. Especially the finger exercises and rhythmic exercises that I practiced when I was little. However, with the other instruments that I have learned, I feel that I am only at an intermediate level. I have not strived to practice and learn them really well like I did with the violin. Maybe at some point, I will sit down and really try to advance my playing. As for now, I am satisfied. For others, I would say that lessons definitely do not hurt. But it does take patience. To establish a firm foothold with any instrument, you have to learn the basics until they come completely natural. I have more to say, but I feel like I have been typing way to much. So these are my thoughts.