Help Me!

Mal,

Welcome! Folks who know a lot more than I will happen along and give more astute advice (sounds like the Billy Goats Gruff story, doesn't it?), but I'd say you're off to a good start.

Keep practicing the chords you do know, and tightening your ability to switch back and forth between them smoothly. Then start adding some more challenging chords, etc. Eventually you'll be adding some barre chords, too.

Since you can read tab, print out a few songs you like and work them up. See the Easy Songs topics here on the Forum--there are many from which to choose. Some have chords, some have tab, some may have both.

Check out the excellent Lessons elsewhere on the GN site, too.

Margaret

A very simple 'ruleset' I follow when deciding what to do:

1) Pick a song you'd like to learn
2) Find out what you can't do but need to learn to play the song
3) Practice that
4) Learn the song
5) Back to #1

Apart from that:
1) Open chords: Em, E, Am, A, Dm, D, G, C,
2) Barre chords, E, Em, A, Am shapes
3) Scales: Major, minor, major pentatonic, minor pentatonic
4) Theory: Learn what makes a chord a chord, what a 'key' is, and how you can add notes to a melody to make a chord progression.
5) Eartraining: Learn to identify intervals, start by just using those of the major scale.

If you practice half an hour every day you should be able to learn all of this in about a year. After that you can decide in what kind of music you'd like yourself to be specialised in and you'll already be able to play the basics of most popular genres.

The very first thing was to find GuitarNoise, which you've already done! Now, just take full advantage of it and go to the Beginner Section https://www.guitarnoise.com/beginner.php and go through those lessons to learn the notes on the fretboard, chords and chord changes, scales, arpeggios and some riffs to get you started. Then, head on over to the Beginner Songs https://www.guitarnoise.com/topics/easy-guitar-songs/ and start taking some/all of David's lessons, which are very detailed and come with mp3s for you to play along with. That will get you off to a very good start!

See? I knew that someone "bigger and better than I" would happen along!! I'm going to print out Arjen's suggestions for myself, in fact.
Arjen wrote: Eartraining: Learn to identify intervals, start by just using those of the major scale.

Here's the way I learned to identify intervals:

A second (one full step--ex: in the key of C, it is C,D) Hear "Do, Re" (of the Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do scale) that one's pretty easy

A third (two full steps--key of C, it is C, E) Hear the two tones of a typical doorbell "Ding Dong"

A fourth (two and a half steps--key of C, it is C, F) Hear the first two notes of "Here comes the bride" song

A fifth (three and a half steps--key of C, it is C, G) this one builds on being able to hear a third, Hear "Do, Mi, So, Do" (up to the octave, "So" being the fifth tone from the bottom "Do")

A sixth (four and a half steps--key of C, it is C, A) Hear the first two notes of "My Bonnie lies over the ocean"

A seventh (five and a half steps--key of C, it is C, B) Hear the first two notes of "There's a place for us" (song from West Side Story, I think)

These little tricks helped me a lot. Hope maybe it will be of some help to you, too.

Margaret

Thanks everyone for helping.

I have one problem though. I've learned the chords to a song but cant get the strumming patteren down.

You mean you can't get the strumming to match a recorded version of it? Or you just can't settle into a comfortable strum pattern that sounds good?

What song is it? Maybe someone here knows or can come up with a reasonable strumming pattern.

Margaret

The Song is: The Man Who Sold The World -- Nirvana.

I can't match the strumming.

Great song. I love the solo in that song. I wouldn't mind learning that one myself. Is that song in standard tuning? I think I read somewhere that it isn't, but maybe I'm confusing it with another song.

Nope, I tune it down 1/2 step. The solo is easy:

E---------------------------
A---------------------------
D---------------------------
G--2-2-2--0--2/3/2--0----
B---------------------------
A--------------------------

Just repeat that 6 times.

But I'm starting to get this song down. And I'm starting to get the hang of another song: Yahweh -- U2. Its their Acoustic Version, pretty easy.

Thanks man, I copied it. I will try it out later.

I am listening to it now. I forgot how cool the bass line is. I found the tab, probably the same one you have. I will try it out.