Complete beginner and where to start???

if you can by all means take a few lessons. it is the best way to familiarize yourself to the guitar.
learn the names of the strings, learn the names and open chord positions. learn which notes make up the chord.
that would be a good start.
train your ear by playing songs.
check out the Lessons section on this forum. youtube has tons of lessons too.

practice, play it clean, keep it simple at first.
you will build muscle memeory and soon your fingers will do the walking.

It might be cool if someone made a sticky thread in this forum with the usual beginner's advice.

Just a thought.

It might be cool if someone made a sticky thread in this forum with the usual beginner's advice.

Just a thought.

Agree to somewhat (very little) extent. What I mean is, yes, you are right. People who are beginning can go to the sticky to see if their questions have already been answered. However, having someone reply directly to the question you have just posted holds alot of value. I've spent hours combing this site and have had many of my own questions answered simply by reading other posts. Having repeated those questions and generating a new dialogue sometimes brought out new answers or shed new light on things.

I think its what keeps the site fresh. There are many places where you can go and “look things up”. Fewer where you can ask a question that's been asked 100x before but still get insightful answers from people that are genuinely interested in helping. And, I think, its one of the best things about GN. People reaching out and helping others.

First, welcome to GN! :D

The advice on lessons it is probably the best one. You can learn from books and internet but initially a teacher could help you to start with the guitar.

There are great instruction books that you can follow. Review the Books forum searching for beginner books and comments on them.

Review the post in the Beginner forum but also the lessons, songs for beginners and other articles in the main site ( https://www.guitarnoise.com ). There are enough info there for being busy several months ;)

It is also very interesting a thread on videos made by beginners, it is in the Hear Here forum.

And don't forget to keep us updated and ask all you need.

Hi, I've just started to learn to play the guitar and at the moment I'm teaching myself at home. I've started with learning what notes are where on the fret and just playing simple tunes with single notes (which reading music doesn't come easy to me) then planning on learning cords. Is this a good way to start or should I be doing something else??? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Figure out what will keep you motivated. For most of us having an idea of some songs you'd like to be able to do gives a goal to work toward so that you'll get some satisfaction when you reach the goal as well as something to play when someone asks you to (!).

A teacher can be incredibly helpful to get you started or confirm the quality of your own start. Be sure they help aim you toward your goal of learning some performable songs you like.

The lessons on this site will help you. Anything by David Hodge is most excellent and you will learn a lot from it.

A :-)

Keep at it ! My teacher always told me... keep your guitar out of it's case and in your face ! Playing even just 15 minutes a day will see you learn at a great rate of knots. If the guitar is packed away you are less likely to want to take it out and play.

I learned only chord stuff first... real important to me was to get my strumming timing right whilst changing chords. This was tough, but you get there. Then I learnt to increase my chord memory by playing songs that had a 1 chord in it that I didn't know too well. I would practise till I got it, then start a new song.

Figure out what will keep you motivated.

+1

That's the single most important thing about learning any instrument. A big percentage of beginners end up dropping out because they aren't motivated enough to push on through the bits that are difficult or dull. We're all motivated in somewhat different ways - some need a lot of structure and direction, some need maximum freedom etc - just work out what floats your own boat. Then don't be one of the ones that stop.

Keep at it ! My teacher always told me... keep your guitar out of it's case and in your face ! Playing even just 15 minutes a day will see you learn at a great rate of knots. If the guitar is packed away you are less likely to want to take it out and play.

Couldn't agree more, my guitar is next to my chair and every time i sit i play, lessons is a must i would say if you've never played before, Try a few teachers don't just stick with the first, you need someone who wants to help you, gets just as exicted as you when you play something cool, and knows your standard and what you like, tell him what you want to learn otherwise if you just play what he tells you you'll lose interest, i had that with my second teacher, He kept tell me that i loved improv, all i wanted to play was covers to start off with. Practice as offen as you can even if it is just 15 mins as someone said before, this site is cool you'll find it a massive help. 8)

Welcome to GN. My biggest advice is more of an echo to what others have said. Don't ever set it down for long periods of time. A week turns into a month turns into a quarter, etc. I've been playing for 4 1/2 years, but for 4 years I played for a few months, set it down for a few months or longer, picked it up again, spent a month getting back to where i was, improve for a few months and then set it down again. I've probably got about 18-24 months worth of progress in 4 1/2 years of playing.

It might be cool if someone made a sticky thread in this forum with the usual beginner's advice.

Just a thought.

Agree to somewhat (very little) extent.

I think you misunderstood my motivation for saying that. It wasn't to discourage new people from asking questions, just to establish a good repository for a good smattering of the good advice given here, like the age old question of acoustic vs. electric for beginners. I certainly would have read it when I first got here...

:)

I agree with the acoustic Vs. electric debate being made into a sticky, looking back through this forumn it seems to come up quite often.

Jack