Since someone I know is giving guitar a try, I thought it would be a good idea to have a "getting started" thread, crammed with good advice for the beginner.
To start off, I came across this justification for playing:
The acoustic is an uncompromising, unforgiving instrument which accurately reflects your mood and inspiration every time you play. Within that seemingly simple box of wood are a small universe of tones, sounds, harmonies, discords and resonances which can fascinate you, tease you, frustrate you, uplift you and inspire you. And all these experiences can be packed into a session of less than fifteen minutes playing.
An acoustic guitar by itself makes no sound...the player is vital; the acoustic guitar merely interprets the player by producing sounds that reflect his attack, fingering technique, picking position, intensity and methodology, not to mention his training, musical roots and sources of inspiration at the time.
The acoustic guitar is so incredibly complex and yet simultaneously disarmingly simple. In the hands of five different players the same guitar sounds like five different guitars. It rewards careful handling and good technique with the sweetest sounds, as any instrument should. It has no artifice; what you hear is what you get, and what you play is what you hear. It is sometimes brutally and unflatteringly honest, yet it beguiles all of us who have fallen under its spell.
Sometimes it refuses to produce the sounds we so earnestly desire, but that is not the guitar's fault, it is our own. When we surrender to the superiority of the instrument, then it yields what we truly desire; music. Few of us become masters, fewer still are virtuosos, fewer still become legends. But all can share in this musical communion knowing that no matter how rudimentary our technique is, or how simple our playing is, even the greats began as we did. For those who travel far with the instrument, they have the great advantage of having a path before them well-trod.
For these reasons, and a thousand others far too abstract to put into English, we play acoustic guitar.
At this point you shouldn't worry too much about what your right hand is doing, how you hold the guitar or how you sit. Right now, the most important thing is to keep you interested. Proper technique won't do you much good if you quit the instrument before you can use it.
The best way to stay interested is to actually be able to play something, and therefore we're going to start with teaching you some basic chords that will come in handy.
First you'll have to learn how to read a normal chord diagram:
And then you have to learn these most basic chords for the guitar. Once you master these you can play about a billion songs!
