Unbeatable Advice From The Greatest Self-Taught Musicians In Rock History

With its do-it-yourself roots and rebellious spirit, rock music has always been the domain of the self-taught musician. In fact, many of rock's greatest musicians were self-taught, eschewing a formal education at an academy or college in favor of hours spent at home, listening and learning ad infinitum. Luckily, many of the greats have also been open with what they've learned, sharing in interviews or other conversations the skills that came from their practice as well as the wisdom that came from their careers.

There's no better advice than that of an expert, and when it comes to rock gods like Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Jack White, and the like, there are no greater experts. When someone ascends to the mountaintop of their field, musical or otherwise, their advice becomes unignorable. From practice style to mindset and creativity to restraints, the rockers featured here have expounded on it all, giving tips and insight as wide-ranging as their individual styles. Here are a number of pearls of wisdom from some of rock's greatest self-taught musicians — advice that simply can't be beat.

As lead guitarist, singer, and songwriter for Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler is not only a guitarists' guitarist but a musicians' musician. He wrote and sang hits like "Sultans of Swing" and the rock history-defining "Money for Nothing," as well as crafted and played their iconic guitar parts, which have a unique fingerpicking style and tone that has proven hard to imitate. Happily, Knopfler has repeatedly given advice on achieving his signature sound and musicianship in general.

About achieving his level of ease with the guitar, Knopfler offered to MusicRadar that "The more you can learn to relax that left arm, the more fluid you'll be. If you tense up, you're just gonna slow down ... Getting the urgency into the playing gets translated into tension, unfortunately. But you've got to stop associating emotion with tension." The larger point he makes is to relax while playing because tension, physical or mental, often hinders instead of helping. Additionally, it's a great piece of advice for getting his soft, rounded tone, as well as decent life advice in general.

Another great bit of advice from Knopfler is to stop stressing about the technique at all and instead focus on creating the best song. As he told Guitar.com, "There are lots of guitarists and musicians with tremendous facility, but they might not be musicians to me — 'musician' is a difficult term. There's a lot more to it than just technique ... Having good chops definitely helps, but it's not the whole story."

Every bit of Jimi Hendrix's writing, playing, and persona screams self-taught and then some, so he naturally had some hard-earned advice to share in his time. His playing was truly unprecedented and completely singular, blending blues, funk, psychedelia, and hard rock into a sound all his own, and his distinct technique of hybridizing rhythm and lead has been copied often but never truly duplicated. Hendrix's advice for reaching as high in the guitar pantheon as he did? Some is blatantly obvious but worth hearing again, as he told Guitar Player in 1968, "Sometimes, you are going to be so frustrated you want to give up the guitar — you'll hate the guitar. But all of this is just a part of learning, because if you stick with it, you're going to be rewarded."

Elsewhere in the interview, Hendrix dropped some less-repeated pearls, such as about songwriting, saying, "You can't just get stuck up on guitar. You have to use a little bit of imagination and break away. There are millions of other kinds of instruments. There's horns, drums — everything." That's a surprising take from the guitar's undisputed master, but then again, whatever inspired him to make the work he did clearly came from an unusual place. 

Perhaps the most surprising advice he gave Guitar Player was about finding like-minded musicians above all. Despite his intensely personal expressiveness, Hendrix revealed that "When I see a group, I look for feeling ... Then I look for togetherness — a communication between the musicians. Originality comes about fourth or fifth."

Kurt Cobain was a once-in-a-lifetime iconoclast, an artist whose work seemed almost entirely novel and would help birth an entire genre. They may have had strong punk roots, but the sound that Nirvana came to define, grunge, was something brand new. Nirvana's style, including Cobain's singing and guitar-playing, never placed more emphasis on technique than it did raw energy or simple, infectious melodies, which is why Cobain's self-taught roots are obvious.

In an interview with Edgar Klüsener, Cobain even went so far as to assert that being self-taught was preferable and having no education at all was even better. "I have no desire to become any better of a guitar player ... I'm not into musicianship at all ... to learn how to read music or to understand arpeggios and Dorian modes and all that stuff is just a waste of time. It gets in the way of originality." That doesn't mean Cobain was against effort, however — just prescribed musical pathways. 

In another interview with Matt Emery, Cobain encouraged new musicians to "Just keep practicing, and don't give up ... play as often as you can, and be really dedicated and try to write good music ... It doesn't matter what you look like ... it doesn't matter what your product looks like. It's what it sounds like." Fitting for an artist with such a sincere and unpolished sound, Cobain advocated above all to do it your own way and never stop.

Rock legend and Led Zeppelin guitarist/producer Jimmy Page has been open in interviews about his pathway to success, which began as a kid listening to record after record and copying what he heard — the prototypical self-taught story. From there, he credits his time as a studio musician for honing his skills. 

As he told the Academy of Achievement, "During the time that I was a studio musician, it was a remarkable apprenticeship. Because the studio discipline — everything is literally within seconds on the clock ... you had to be absolutely precise and you had to be able to deliver all the time. If you'd hadn't you wouldn't be seen again." Page cites the immense pressure to deliver in the studio as the force that most improved him. More broadly, his quote speaks to the way in which setting deadlines and restrictions can be advantageous for self-discipline.

Page was more than just a drillmaster, though. He also encourages artists to find what distinguishes them and lean into it. "I believe every guitar player inherently has something unique about their playing," he once said. "They just have to identify what makes them different and develop it" (via Far Out). Echoing this, the legend once told the Telegraph that "I can't think of a greater guitar icon than someone who has the musical intellect to change what was there before, and take music in another direction. That's a guitar hero for me." Page's words highlight how being true to yourself is a bigger marker for success and artistry than technique.

Jack White, the guitarist, singer, and songwriter behind the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, the Dead Weather, and an extensive and successful solo career, is another guitarist who's clearly self-taught. Everything from his look to his voice to his guitar-playing, which combines blues, rock, and some form of black magic known only to White, is unique. When asked by NME (via Kotaku) what advice he had for new guitarists, he replied in a fittingly unique way, answering that "They need to quit playing video games, throw away their AutoTune program, and cut three strings off their guitar."

The advice is not entirely unprecedented, however. The encouragement to quit video games represents the more general idea to limit distractions, and the anti-AutoTune stance is more of a general rule to learn to perform yourself instead of relying on technological tricks. As strange as "cut three strings off their guitar" might sound, it's not wholly unprecedented, either. While it could merely be a metaphor for narrowing your focus to the basics before expanding, it also has some very concrete precedent.

Another legend, Slash, famously first learned on a one-stringed guitar, which forced him to master single-string riffs before even attempting the whole instrument. It goes a long way towards explaining legendary licks like the blistering buildup section of the "Sweet Child O' Mine" solo, which moves around the high E string uncannily smoothly. Zooming out, it's clear that both Slash and White understand how helpful it can be to master whatever basics you need in order to accurately bring out your own voice.