Questions for music board guitar plays

Be committed and don't get discouraged early. Learn the notes of the fret board first thing.

First poster had a good recommendation. A Squier Strat (sister company of Fender) is about your best value for a beginner instrument. Something like this $149 guitar.
As far as an amp, there are tons of options but the amps that would fit your need would be a small solid state combo. All gear, for the most part, is a matter of personal preference so almost anything anyone will recommend to you is a matter of opinion. I have been having a little Marshall combo like this one for almost 10 years now and it's still going strong. It has a clean channel, a dirty channel, headphones input to practice in silence, aux input, etc. The Orange Crush series makes excellent sounding amps for the money and the Marshall Code series they just released is fantastic for the money, but is a considerable jump up in price and is more than likely something that you wont be able to use to it's full effect for the first year or so of learning. It has on board effects that allows you to get a lot more creative and emulate more genres of music. Not necessary in the beginning.

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How hard would u say it is to learn to play?

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This is subjective. I have been playing for 21 years now and have worked my arse off to get to where I'm at. I feel it came to me pretty easy but I also put a lot of work into it. You may pick it up very easily, or it may be very challenging. The first month or so will be challenging regardless, so that's not what Im talking about. Your fingers will hurt and your hand and forearm will cramp up constantly. You just have to work through that. Once you get the muscle memory down and begin to get your picking hand and fretting hand in sync, youre on your way.

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Did you teach yourself to play or lessons?

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How self sufficient are you? Ive never taken lessons and believe they are not necessary if you can grasp the basics and are driven to learn. Print a basic chord chart from the google and begin developing the muscle memory in your fretting hand and learn all basic chords (A,B,C,D,E,F,G). Then learn the minors of all of those. This will take some time and will be uncomfortable. You will literally have to place your fingers with your opposite hand in the beginning to make sure you are fretting the right notes. (Tip - Use the tips of your fingers, not the fat part of your fingers where you would take a fingerprint from. This will ensure that you are not accidentally muting the string below that finger and it will allow both strings to ring true. Imagine placing your fingers at a 90 degree angle to the fretboard instead of at a more comfortable 45 degree angle. 90 degree is proper form. This will make your hand cramp up, don't get discouraged as you'll get past it if you practice enough)

The next thing I would do once you have chords memorized and can make every one of the ring clear with no muted strings, is switching from chord to chord cleanly. Perhaps look at a common progression or a popular song you like and slowly build up while playing with it. An example would be "Simple Man". It's C, G, Am. Three chords in that order. You learn those three, you can play along with the song.

Next would be switching chords cleanly with rhythm. Once you can do that, you can play almost anything.

Lead playing -
Learn the minor pentatonic "blues scale". This is the most common scale in almost all music. There are countless vids out there to show you what notes to play and how to apply them. That will get you on your way.

Do it. It's a good choice. Easier to start with and quieter.

I am starting with acoustic. Glad I did but it was a mistake. When you start and are embarassed by sucking you can suck quietly on headphones.

I get no such luxury with an acoustic. My family suffers.

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enjoy reading about how LSU alum wannabe is coming along.

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Slowly. But fully addicted now. Always piddling with it. CAGED is pretty good. I can barre an F. But barre's get sticky. My ear picks up more and more. I can just hold a chord shape and move down the neck and know I heard that in "such and such" song. Couldn't tell you the chord.

I just get muddled and distracted with lessons. I'm playing the song "Long Road" Pearl jam. It is simple and chords change slowly. So I feel like I should be singing along to the recording or my playing. Well singing AND playing is no baby step.

Also finger (Travis) picking fricks me up. Which it should. If you can't strum you have no business tackling picking. And then add John Prine. He picks but picks wrong. Only uses 2 fingers and capo 75% of the time. He's only using 2 fingers.

Makes my head hurt.

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Slowly.

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And that's perfectly OK. My attitude is that I try to get better every day. Sometimes it's only a tiny bit better; sometimes I make a vast amount of progress. But as long as I'm heading in the right direction, I'm fine with that. I've been working on "Impending Death of the Virgin Spirit" for what seems like a year. Two nights ago I finally was able to play the whole thing start to finish. Now I didn't play it very well, and I slowed way down in parts but at least I got through it. I got a lot of satisfaction and sense of accomplishment from that even though I've still got weeks before I'm fluent.

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He's only using 2 fingers.

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Hell Django Reinhardt only had two fingers.

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How hard would u say it is to learn to play?

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Learning to play is pretty easy. Learning to play well is hard.

Remember this though: the guitar is the one and only musical instrument that you can thoroughly enjoy without having to be a virtuoso. You can be a chord strummer like me and:
• Play countless songs
• Write and play your own songs
• Derive tremendous satisfaction from very, very ordinary capabilities

I'd start with an acoustic guitar, but if you're committed to an electric, a Squier 50s model will cost you maybe $300 and be perfectly suited to your needs. You might start off with a practice amp too.

Good luck--and enjoy: there is hardly anything in this life that is more flat out cool than playing guitar.

Gonna pick mine up right now ...

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Somebody tell the OP about different apps that will help get all the sounds he would want out of an electric?

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Let's just link him to your thread: LINK /