hey there Justin,
I have no idea what you know, so sorry if any of the following is a waste of time / obvious to you...
first off...get your guitar into tune:
Your strings are e, B, G, D, A, E. (with high "e" furthest away from your eyes when in the playing position, and low "E" closest to your eyes.)
Follow the path of the strings back to the head to locate the tuner for each string.
Play a string and while its ringing turn its respective tuner. Traditionally turning the tuner towards you (clockwise) should lower the pitch, and turning it away from you (anticlockwise) should increase the pitch.
This is how you will tune your guitar....by turning these untill each string has the correct pitch.
Once you have one string in tune, you can tune the other five using that one as a starting reference.
The one most people go for is the "high-e" string.
There are a number of ways you can get this into tune.
If you have a piano or a keyboard, play middle/high E on that and adjust the tuner on your guitar until the high e on your guitar rings at the same pitch. Don't worry if it takes a long time to get the pitch right, it may take you up to 5 minutes...maybe even longer. Eventually u'll be able to do it in a matter of seconds.
If you don't have a piano/keyboard, there are sites on the internet which have wav. files of "perfectly tuned" open strings, find one of high e and use it.
A very crude way of doing it (I don't recommend this at all...and any other alternative would be better!) would be tuning it using a song....e.g. Lindsey's solo after John's famous bass part on the original version of "The Chain" is initially just him playing high e over and over again....from about 3:23 to 3:28.......use this a reference ONLY if you have no other way of hearing a good high e.
Once you have high e tuned, do this:
tune the B string so that when you hold down on the 5th fret, it sounds the same as the open high e string.
Once you've done that, tune the G string so that when you hold down on the 4th fret, it sounds the same as the open B string.
Then tune the D string so that when you hold down on the 5th fret, it sounds the same as the open G string.
Then tune the A string so that when you hold down on the 5th fret, it sounds the same as the open D string.
Finally, tune the (low) E string so that when you hold down on the 5th fret, it sounds the same as the open A string.
(NB..."open" means playing the string without holding down on any fret)
If you've done this correctly, you should at least have the guitar in tune with itself, even if your starting high e wasn't standardly perfect.
As a total alternative...buy an electronic tuner. This will come with a complete instructions manual and it will tell you exactly how to tune your guitar...you can use it either to get one string into "perfect tune" and then use the same method above to tune the other strings...or you can use it to tune each string individually.
Ok, now you have your guitar in tune.
As CarneVaca said, you must decide what kind of a player you want to become...a chord strummer or a "lead" player.
I would personally advise you to go for the latter. People who can play lead, can ALWAYS play rhythm and strum along with any song using chords, if they want to. But people who've only learnt chords obviously can't play any solos or lead guitar.
Becoming a good strummer might take you anything between 1 and 3 years IMO....becoming a good lead guitarist might take 10 years+.
If you want to be a chord player (only), buy a good book which has an extensive list of chords and how to form them (i.e. tabs or diagrams to show you). After a few months you should be able to start "catching onto" the patterns...e.g. how to go from any major into its respective minor...etc.
The book itself will take you through a logical pattern of learning (i.e. it will start with the most common, easy chords and go on from there).
Also, make sure the book has some "chord progressions", to give you a feel of how you can put different chords together to form some nice strumming patterns.
I recommend "Chords and Progressions" by Jared Walker. (Although I'm not sure if its still in print!)
If you want to learn to play "lead"...i.e. playing songs using individial notes, playing fills, playing solos, AND playing chords...etc etc....there's no straightforward way of doing it. You could get yourself a teacher to start with some really easy tunes, and get better and better. Once he/she's started you off you could carry on by self-teaching yourself.
Or you could teach yourself from day 1. And I would recommend this. You go at your own pace, and your ability will increase exponentially with time if you're practising on a daily basis. Plus, you get to learn the songs that you enjoy, not what the teacher wants you to learn. As a starting point, try picking out some simple melodies. Don't even attempt to try and make your gutiar sound like what you hear on the CDs etc (regardless of whether the song is played with an acoustic or electric)...just "play the tune"....note for note. Yes, to be blunt, it will sound crap compared with the actual song, but this is the only way to learn.
(Incidentally, don't choose any Travis fingerpicking songs to learn with...i.e. The Chain (pre bass solo), Landslide, Big Love (live) are all out of the question. They will confuse you. These are several years down the line, if you're good.)
There really is no way I can (over the internet!) teach you how to do this...press down one fret on one string, you'll get a note. Move one fret higher (towards) you, and you'll increase the pitch of the previous note you played by a half a step/tone. Move it lower (away from you), and you'll decrease the pitch by half a step/tone.
This will become immediately obvious to you within minutes of playing, you've probably already realised this.
Just play around and get some simple tunes going.
There are far fewer notes available to you than you think...most notes can be played at various locations on the board.
Here are the main notes/locations you should start with:
Open E string = (low) E,
E1 = F, E2 = F#, E3 = G, E4 = G#, E5 = A
Open A string = A,
A1 = A#, A2 = B, A3 = C, A4 = C#, A5 = D
Open D string = D,
D1 = D#, D2 = (middle) E, D3 = F, D4 = F#, D5 = G
Open G string = G,
G1 = G#, G2 = A, G3 = A#, G4 = B,
Open B string = B,
B1 = C, B2 = C#, B3 = D, B4 = D#, B5 = E
Open e string = (high) E
e1= F, e2= F#, e3= G, e4= G#, e5 = A.....etc..........e12 = highest E.
Try playing from open E to highest E using that scale above, to give you a feel of the half-step increases per fret.
Once you're on the road of playing some simple melodies, learn some chords aswell. The ones CarneVaca named above are a good choice, learn these and learn some nice progressions with them to boost your confidence (a beginner playing simple chords will always sound more pleasing to the ear of him/herself and others when playing chords rather than trying to pick out simple melodies.) Use books or the internet to learn chords.
www.chordfind.com has every chord you will ever need, and more.
Also, definitely check out this site, it's one of the best guitar teaching sites on the net:
www.zartmo.com/guitarlibrary.html
Finally, don't expect to wake up possesed with the spirit of Jimi Hendrix after 1 month of playing....it takes YEARS to get even reasonably good, it WILL take you MANY years to become a "good guitarist". As long as you're enjoying yourself every step of the way, it should be a very pleasant and totally worthwhile trip.
In answer to your question, "how did you start out?"....my parents bought me an acoustic when I was 5 years old and being strangely obsessed with the group "The Shadows" I taught myself to play along with songs like "F.B.I"..."Apache"...."Wonderful Land"...etc....etc....a very unusual, but extremely effective way of starting out!
If your fingers are "burning", haha....welcome to the fingerprintless-lefthanders club !!!
(PS....feel free to email / PM me if u need help with anything.)