I hope this is the right forum for guitar questions....

I have just bought my husband a guitar. It is a Yamaha one. I also bought him a beginners book. My daughter who is 5 has guitar lessons with a teacher who comes to our house. My hubby already has piano lessons and is doing well. The thing we were wondering is whether guitar is something you can teach yourself out of a book or whether you really need a teacher to start you off.

Thanks,

LearnerFlute

What sort of guitar is it? Classical - with nylon strings?

You can teach yourself the guitar and there are many good books available, I can recommend some if you are interested. Or find a music shop with a good selection, and have a look. Depends on what he is interested in really. You can play classical and read music, or strum chords and sing along, or use guitar tab. All of this can be self-taught.

I have experienced both self teaching and lessons. Taking lessons has two advantages. A teacher can give you confidence and hints about better playing, and you have an incentive to practise. I certainly have improved no end since taking lessons.

As much as I love my hubby dearly, I am not sure the singing route would be good idea! He likes to play classical music on the piano but he also likes heavy metal music.

I think his guitar his steel strung not nylon..

I think he just wants to be able to play some tunes people recognise.

Steel strings = acoustic guitar.

I only know about Classical Guitars, (which are like little pianos you can hug), which need a completely different technique.

Perhaps hubby would benefit from a few lessons to get him started? The Register of Guitar Tutors might have a member near you. http://www.rgt.org/tutors/

I play the classical guitar and got off to a false start with a "teacher" who had no idea how to read music let alone play the classical guitar. My intention from the outset was to take the graded exams (grade 5 next). The guitar exams for the main exam boards are for Classical Guitar. Confusions arises as they refer to this as "Guitar" - whereas most people mean acoustic guitar when they say "Guitar".

Trinity offer exams for Plectrum Guitar as well as Classical.

And Rockschool, and Trinity Rock and Pop. I don't know about LCM but it seems like the kind of thing they'd do too.

Oh I didn't know this! It shouldn't be an issue though. He only wants to do guitar for fun whereas he will probably end up doing piano exams at some point.

Mind you - I only started violin "for fun" and think I would like to do an exam

Our whole family is learning something now. The idea was to do something constructive instead of watching tv all the time. Now we all just lock ourselves away in various rooms practicing our instruments so we don't see each other much!

I do flute and violin. Hubby does piano and now has a guitar. My daughter has piano lessons and my younger daughter has guitar lessons.

You can teach yourself Guitar. You can teach yourself practically any instrument you care to name. Whether that is a good idea or not is an entirely different matter. I suppose it depends on the level you want to get to. Basic Chords and strumming is relatively easy. Advanced Diploma type pieces are somewhat more elusive!
Classical Guitars are Nylon strung. 'Folk' or acoustic (actually Classical Guitars are really acoustic!) use steel strings.
The Plectrum technique is very different to the finger technique used on the Classical Guitar. I can play Classical finger technique but would be completely lost when it came to using a Plectrum. The fretting 'left' hand is near identical. Moving from one technique to the other would almost be like learning half of a new instrument.

I disagree I think it depends on the instrument. A very very long time ago I taught myself violin for only a month and boy am i lucky it was only a month. I had no way of knowing the many things i was doing wrong, were wrong, and luckily it had only been a month so I was able to change the bad habits etc.

The VAST majority of acoustic/electric/rock/pop/folk (call them what you will) guitarists are self taught, so yes, it is perfectly feasible. There are probably more tutor books for guitar in your average music shop than anything else.

I know a few folk Violinists who are self taught. I don't know any classical Violinists who are self taught though. It's the same for Classical guitarists. I'm sure they are out there but how good their technique is might be another matter.

I really struggled to find a proper Classical Guitar teacher. The first one I went to was self-taught on a variety of acoustic/electric guitars and had added Classical Guitar to the list of instruments he taught - but he really didn't know the first thing about CG technique. He couldn't even read music.

Beware indeed of classical guitar teachers who tag "classical" onto a long list of other genres they teach.
I was self taught to grade 4 then hit a wall technically, got some very good tuition and had to re-learn my technique and undo all my bad practice in order to progress. If you aspire to playing classical guitar then it's most important you start right with a classical guitar specialist, as you would with any other string instrument. Teachers are few and far between though but worth it. Classical guitar is a technically demanding instrument, but in my opinion an extremely beautiful and expressive one with a wealth of glorious repertoire to discover.
If you just want to enjoy a bit of simple strumming and folky stuff then self taught on an acoustic guitar is fine, I'm not a snob about it! That's what's great about acoustic guitar, you can just have a go and have alot of fun making nice sounding music with limited technique. And if you can play guitar, you can play ukelele too! Yay!
Kate (grade 8 classical guitar).

From my experience, teaching yourself is quite possible, but I'd recommend having an occasional lesson to make sure bad habits aren't developing, which can be much harder to undo later.

Just an aside ...

My elderly father, who used to do a lot of luthier-type things with violins, recently acquired a rather battered classical guitar from a junk shop. He's repaired the bridge and we've bought some strings but it needed a new nut.

Being hundreds of miles from decent music shops and not on the internet he has improvised... with a toothbrush!

He has cut the handle from a white Tesco 'value' toothbrush to the right shape and made a perfectly functioning nut for his guitar.

Ingenious!!