It's a strange balance. On the one hand, if you don't start with guidance from a mentor, you'll likely hit a bunch of obstacles because you don't have the know

It's a strange balance. On the one hand, if you don't start with guidance from a mentor, you'll likely hit a bunch of obstacles because you don't have the knowledge to avoid them. And it's orders of magnitude more difficult to adjust a bad habit than to not form it in the first place (at least for physical habits). So before doing the "chores" one ought to do a sanity check with a trusted mentor. On the other hand, the only mentoring the Shaggs needed was about how to tune a guitar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR9d4ESlpHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR9d4ESlpHY If they had started with a music teacher, there is a 99.9999% chance they would have all ended up playing a tune in 4/4 in the same tempo instead of the asynchronous rhythmic cycles that they came up with. Edit: clarification