BlueGrass, congratulations. What kind of guitar did you get? That is important because different manufacturers set up their guitars differently. These days Epiphone is making guitars that are very easy to play, but if you buy a Martin, you generally have to have it set up for your own style of playing. If the strings are too high on whatever you bought, don't be discouraged, take it to a guitar repair shop or a luthier and have them lower the action for you.
Second, what style of playing are you interested in? Are you going to mostly strum or do you want to learn fingerstyle? You should look for a teacher who will help you with the style in which you are interested. Definitely learn all the basic open chords on your own: A, B, C, D, E, F G. Also learn the relative minors, which are chords such as A minor, F# minor and E minor. Get yourself a chord dictionary. Hint: the easist chords to play are C, D G, Am and Em. Learn these first. You'll also find that a disproportionate number of songs is built around these chords
An alternative to getting a teacher is to use videos. Happy Traum videos tend to be pretty instructive. Say, if you wanted to learn acoustic blues, buy an acoustic blues video. Books are also very good, but if you can't read music, there are some limitations.
Lastly, go out and buy a Korg electronic tuner. It should cost you about $20. Until you get this, you'll be getting very frustrated because you won't know how to tune your guitar. That will come later. Or you may never be able to tune it by ear, but with the electronic gizmo you won't need to. Your ear, however, should eventually get discerning enough to know when you are out of tune.
Good luck.
|