re: Resolved to learning to play guitar: advice wanted

Generally, less expensive acoustic guitars are more difficult to play. Starting out use a set of lighter gauge strings. I like Martin's phospher bronze acoustics but any similar will do.

Tons of beginner lessons on You Tube find an instructor you like and stay with them. No need to pay for web based lessons at this stage. You might later.

Get your fingers in shape strumming chords for a month or so and then take personal lessons from a teacher. Do that for at least 6 months and you progress significantly better than self taught.

Expect to practice at least one hour 5 days a week minimum more as you can. You'll hit a wall but it slowly gets better the first year and then takes off.

Learn some basic music theory early on so you know why and how C/F/G for example progresses up the neck. The Nashville Number System is fairly easy to learn.

Always play in tune buy a cheap electronic tuner or download the free Fender tuner app on your phone.

Good luck it's addictive!

Man, I had completely forgotten about those commercials. They were awful.

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BUT, if the OP is 30ish/40ish, presumably has a job, and isnt looking to eventually tour with Van Halen- in my opinion, the easiest, most effective route to playing guitar is to avail yourself of the many (in most cases free) tools online and take your time, go at your pace and eventually you’ll do fine... To me, being in the same boat a few yrs back, things like learning musical theory would have been intimidating..

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Sums me up to a T. Thanks!

I need to learn so bad. It’s the only thing holding me back from having complete songs.

The guitar is a hand me down fender gt11. Anyone have opinions on that?

Like mentioned, get a beginners book that shows notes and how to recognize them and where they are played on the neck.

I had some old Mel Bay Guitar books from many years ago I gave to a young fellow wanting to learn and one was the Basic Guitar for Beginners and the other was a book on chords that starts off with the fundamentals and progresses into much more difficult stuff that finds you using the entire neck of the guitar.

Just messin’ wid ya bro.



Good luck with learning the cithern.

You have it made these days.........Youtube is your friend. Ive been learning for over 43 years and STILL discover new things on youtube. Any specific song you want to learn, Google search "tab" for it and learn how to translate that to your fingers. Listen to each part of the song and pause the recording, play it slowly from the tab then repeat. over and over and over again. A lot of it is simply repetition. Dont just learn the guitar though. Find this guy on youtube, Rick Beato, watch the videos he makes of "What Makes This Song Great". He will isolate the different tracks of familiar songs so you learn not only the guitar part but also how it is used in the song.Dont give up, be persistent! It will come to you a little at a time and light bulbs will go off more and more often. LINK

Lots of free stuff on YouTube. (Justin Guitar already mentioned) I paid for a few courses from Steve Stine on Guitarzoom.com - guy’s a good teacher.

Start with learning G-C-D-Am and Em chords. You’ll be playing songs in no time.

If you can, keep your guitar in a place you are in the most (living room, bedroom, bonus room). Just having it close by will make it easier to grab and play a few chords or songs. I have a music room upstairs but always play more when I keep mine in my living room.