Beginner Guitar Question

Assuming you are not going to really take it past the "minor hobby" level you will definitely want and need to learn tabs.

If you get serious, than learning how to read sheet music as well as musical theory is probably a must.

I feel like tabs can get you pretty far, but at the same time only take you so far.

Tabs and do yourself a favor and invest in a good loop pedal. Great for playing by yourself and building solos and keeping solid rhythm.

what about strum and picking patterns. what's a source to learn them?

Appreciate the help everyone

What's the best place to start learning music theory/reading music? Youtube?

I feel like the internet age is both a help and a hindrance to people that are just starting to play the guitar these days.

It's certainly nice to have all the learning resources the internet makes available at your fingertips, but, also, speaking personally, it's also made me a bit lazy. I've been playing for...22 or 23 years now. Jesus, that's depressing. But anyway.

I feel like I learned more, accomplished more, back in the days when, if there was a song or part I wanted to learn, I had to sit down with a tape or CD and work it out by ear. A lot of times, I think the majority of the learning that came along with that kind of work came not from having finally mastered whatever it was I was working on, but rather from the mistakes I made in the process. If that makes any sense.

ETA: I guess my advice, then, if you can find the motivation, is to do both. Take advantage of the resources you have available today, but also, spend some time working things out by ear. This will also help develop your ear and make things a lot easier for you if you find yourself playing in a group situation, and especially when you start trying to compose your own music.

Forget tabs.

Get a book on rhythm or lead techniques and learn how the basics of chord progressions and scales and why things sound good and how to read and use the fretboard.

Even better if you can learn to read music.

Tabs are fun to learn a song or two, but they don't go very far in allowing you to develop your own music.

If you just want to be a straightforward cover artist, there's nothing wrong with that, go ahead and learn tabs.

If you want to be your own musician, learn how to play the instrument yourself .

Chords, hands down. Learning a few commonly used chords instantly opens up your song arsenal. Reading chords and lyrics while playing is much more fun than spending however long learning one song and beating it to death.

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Learn the open chords and power chords. You can generally play almost any rock song after learning that stuff.

Once you get bored with that move to barre chords, (that will suck), and scales.

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This all day.

at those recommending the OP learn how to read and write sheet music.

I think one of the best things to do, is learn chord building.
It makes everything else easier.

At this point, I wouldn't worry about playing any song perfectly, go ahead and learn as many as you can, then you will find that you are improving all around, and its easier to play more of them well.
That's just my opinion.

I think is also good to try and memorize every note on the neck. You will see the pattern pretty quick, that will help you understand a lot of stuff.

Play around with some scales a bit when you are bored too.

LINK

Something like this?