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> I'm told it's easier to self-learn the guitar

This is false. If you want to strum some chords, then, yes. Guitar's difficulty curve starts out very gentle. But then it quickly gets really, really steep. I self taught classical guitar for a couple of years (after already having played violin for many years), and it's easy to get yourself to the point where it's hard to advance without a teacher. And the harder you push on that knee in the curve by yourself, the more time you'll probably have to spend unlearning bad habits.

Piano's difficulty curve is more even. It starts steeper than guitar, and has a long stretch at about that same slope, before it starts getting steep, too. Compare that to violin which starts basically straight up, but once you get past that initial cliff is fairly gentle for a long, long way.




Interesting multidimensional analysis. I’d like to see a collection and ongoing discussion of these graphs. Not just for musical instruments but everything. Start a blog, friend, or point me at ones you’ve seen.


I'll add a todo to my list to write up the idea. As far as I know I came up with it, and I've been telling it to people in person for at least a decade.




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