@RightEveryTime let me just say this. Practice, a lot. It takes a while to "get the hang" of the guitar, and that's what most people don't understrand or expect. It takes months and months of sounding BAD to get anywhere close to sounding good. But that's okay, that's natural.

I was "good" at playing, meaning I could switch chords and play notes cleanly after 6 months of busting my a**. I played for a few hours everyday, and the most important thing is to KEEP PLAYING THROUGH THE FRUSTRATING PARTS. Don't just do a certain riff or song or chord because it's easy. It's SUPPOSED to be hard, you just have to go in ready to DOMINATE it. Just like learning how to draw,just like learning how to build a car engine from spare parts, everything in life takes practice. Don't give up, keep getting frustrated because it means you're actually trying.

Oh yeah, and don't just learn other peoples' songs - learn and make your own if you really want to grow as a musician!

Sources Used: http://www.coreyhartford.com

Guitars, like any other instrument take time and steady practice to really understand everything. But also know you will not get worse if you practice consecutively. And that’s only the bad news because the rest after that is just making music. You should think of guitar as part of your soul using your picking to vibrate the strings and make effects while you pinch and stretch to pick the notes that the vibrations throw out.

Really, the best and positive way to find the notes, after the guitar is tuned of course, (standard tuning would be EADGBe) is to understand pitches and notes are to the ears as colors are to the eyes. You wouldn't throw any random colors together. It may not look good. And anyone who has taken art class found that some colors have opposites such as green to red and so on.

You have your chords, your harmonies, bar chords, different genres have other techniques like in heaviest of metal, they do break downs where play really fast, technical, and melodic riffs that builds power and then minus time where the play it a fraction slower as such, breaking it down.

You are capable of picking anything you want to pick as long as it sounds good to you.
Here are some words defined in my head to help in any other way
Thank you and I hope this helps in any way

CHORD-a number of notes played together in melody
PALM MUTING- a technique with your picking hand, you place the bottom of your palm on the bridge as you pluck the strings.
SCALES- a collection of pitches in ascending or descending order which forms the basis for musical creativity.

Hey RightEveryTime!!!

Guitar is actually not that hard to learn, you just have to start with the basics.
I suggest some Some good chords to start with are G, C, D, Am, Em, Am7, D7.

After you can play 5-10 chords, (but make sure you really get the hang of it). You can start practicing scales.

Do this for about six months! About 6 months in, it's time to really focus on getting a steady beat and then playing more interesting rhythms. Playing a steady beat is actually much harder than it seems so don't start with that.

It's a good idea to watch what they do (hopefully you can get some video of them) and try to do the same things yourself. This is more fun than learning from a book, although you can do that too.

Good luck!!!

If you are even considering playing guitar you already a hero! Playing the guitar is a big subject. There is a lot to know and no matter how many years you have been playing there is always more to find out!

The good news is that today more than ever there are literally dozens of sources to help you on your learning route. But to start with the basics you have to consider the guitar itself. If you have a cheap acoustic guitar chances are you will not be able to play those super fast rock guitar licks you dream of because of the guitars limitations. Cheap acoustics the place most guitarists start, are good for learning basic scales and chords; where the notes are and standard EADGBE tuning.

If you dream of Electrified guitar work of any kind you MUST get an electric guitar, (Makers like Epiphone and Squire are a good place to start) even if you don’t get an amplifier to initially. This is because you can lower the action (distance above the fret board) allowing you to fret those barre chords much more easily. Depending on how fast you want to go, you may want to consider string thickness too. 10 guage strings are a good place to start. Though makers like Ernie Ball, make super thin strings and various thin/ fat combos to meet your specific needs. Don’t go too thin to start as you will keep busting your strings!

Next work on your practice routine. Do not try to work out a super fast or complex song to start out, as you will not be able to cut it and will get discouraged. Buy yourself a couple of books. I would recommend the guitar case chord book and the guitar case scales book. Scales and chords should be the basis of your practice routine. Then you can start working on techniques: hammer ons, pull offs, string bending vibrato etc. These techniques are important and if you practice them well initially, you will use them again and again throughout your playing career.

There are two main ways of picking: finger style and using a plectrum. Some players use a combination which is called hybrid picking. Picking strings in a chord so they sound individually is called an appegio. Don’t worry. The only rule with guitar is you make your own rules! If it sounds good it is right!

Working on music theory will be a big help and make you progress exponentially. Also check out guitar magazines for tips and tabulation. Speaking of tabulation there is tons of it on the web, but most of it is awful. If you really want to play like a certain artist buy the real tab or even videos. The Hal Leonard web site is a good place to start for this. Finally don’t forget to have fun! Playing guitar is the most rewarding things you will ever do!

Just for fun:
Chord combos? Remember the song by Genesis "Abacab"? Guess the chord progression ;) (or so I was told)

I like playing off: Am, G, A, & D/Dm (and maybe a few C tossed in)