Hi there,
About my person first of all (unnecessary information, can skip if not interested):
I'm a german boy at the age of 17 with a great interest in playing instruments as good as possible but a not so great interest in music theory. I startet playing the piano and the accordion when I was around 7 years old, and at this time I never really enjoyed it. Some time (a whole lot of time, around 7-8 years) went by and I stopped practicing the songs that my teacher gave me (which may have caused my severe lack of interest in the theory behind the music) and started playing songs I actually liked to listen to myself. That was, when the fun came into this whole instrument playing stuff. For my 17th birthday, I got myself a guitar and put myself into a self-experiment on how important a teacher is, when learning an entirely new instrument! This is half a year ago by the time I'm writing this "bloggy" thing right here.
The self-experiment:
I love music in general but I really have a favor for rock/pop and rather soft metal. That's why playing the piano and the accordion wasn't giving me the kick anymore so I started playing the guitar half a year ago by now.
Never have I ever played a guitar before I got myself a quite expensive one... *raises glass*
Never have I ever regretted it... *nothing happens*
That's right. At the moment I am super happy with my descision and love learning something new all by myself. Beeing new to an activity may suck in the very beginning but as soon as you start seeing progress of any kind it really is the greatest feeling you can ever expirience. Not even beeing perfect at something feels as satisfying as improving at it (my opinion). The fact that there is nobody but yourself to be proud of, is what is making the whole expirience very special to me. I may not be as good as I could be with a very trained and professional guitar teacher but in my opinion this isn't even that important at that point. The fun I am having, beeing able to learn new things every single day and also beeing able to choose, what those things are, really compensates it for me.
My conclusion:
I'd say that a teacher is very useful if you just want to get very good at a certain instrument, but if you're just playing this instrument and want to have fun (or aren't playing it yet and get inspired to start doing so by me now) I think it is very important to just head onto youtube (or whatever website) and look for the exact thing you want to be able to do. The moment when you manage to play your most favourite song on an instrument you just touched for the first time of your life is just unforgettable and I can only recommend self teaching in this, and maybe even every aspect, of your life.