There is a ton of good advice in here (there always is–the Straight Dope guitarist collective are a knowledgeable bunch) so the only thing I think needs to be added is a simple statement that will hopefully be a push for you during those times when you aren’t sure of yourself or don’t feel like playing.
Fundamentally, learning to play the guitar is like anything else. You will get better at it the more you play. Don’t worry about the things that I worried about while I was learning to play all of those years. Don’t worry that you can sacrifice all of this time and still not be a good, or even great, guitar player. You may pick up some bad habits along the way (some of which may get in the way of your ability to play complex numbers without a headache or two), but you will get better the more you play. In other words, if you want to be able to play Sweet child of mine as well as Slash, You can do it, even if your form or technique is off from lack of formal training. It may be harder, but you can, and likely will, play it as good the more time you spend trying to do it.
This is not to say that you should just ignore the fundamentals and just put your head down and plow through all of the songs you want to learn until you learn them, but sometimes it’s this rigid adherence to form and technique that can strangle you creatively and make you put the instrument down altogether. This is something that players like Angus Young and Stevie Ray Vaughan understood completely.
I suppose what I am trying to say is that although the basics are very important and many hours should go into picking up on the nuances of the instrument and musical theory in general during your lifelong love affair with this six-string creature, more importantly you should spend most of your time doing the things that give you enough enjoyment that you keep coming back and snatching your axe up by the neck and playing it in the first place. Do not get so caught up in the details that you find yourself without your guitar in hand, or you will begin to hang shirts off of the headstock as it rests in its stand.
Also, there’s something you need to know. It’s an ugly secret about most instruments but I think it rings particularly true with the guitar, and although I have never regretted a minute of the time I spent learning to play the guitar, it is a secret that you need to know, because it matters. You will feel two things during the process of learning to play a favorite song. The first feeling is the TREMENDOUS sense of accomplishment from learning a song from start to finish, every subtle nuance, every snaking riff, recreated via your fingertips, the battle won and the notes that you chewed through to get to the end are like dead soldiers lying on the floor all around you, conquered. It is an emotional high that no drug on the planet can touch and it never really diminishes. The second feeling is felt sometime, usually near the middle of the learning of a song, where things are beginning to click and you are starting to get the hang of it, and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. That feeling is a little like someone spoiling a magic trick for you. Once you understand how the music is played, a little of that magic is lost, and you can never get it back. For you, the song doesn’t remain the same. You’ll still love it, though you might not respect it as much after conquering it.
Learning to play a Stevie Ray Vaughan song so well that the average listener can’t tell the difference between your cover and his original is akin to winning the lottery. Discovering that once you learn to play Pride and Joy, you also automatically know how to play Honey Bee, because the music is nearly identical and, as a matter of fact, most of SRV’s entire catalog can be picked up from just learning a small handful of his songs is a little bittersweet, and like having your lottery winnings cut in half by taxes. For most beginning guitar players, discovering that Angus Young (AC/DC) isn’t actually some kind of a guitar god, but just someone who plays very basic cords and ultra simple riffs and solos and really only excels at putting all of that together in one kick ass song after another may be a little bit of a letdown, but just remember that this only means that you are beginning to get so good that you are slowly rising to the level of that kind of play and are no longer in the crowd, wondering how they could possibly do it. You are becoming a magician, and to do this you must surrender yourself to the notion that there is no real magic, only the magical feeling that you experience from trying to prove to yourself and others that maybe there really is.
Just keep playing. I promise you that if you do your life will be twice as rewarding than if you never played at all. It is the closest to heaven that I’ll ever get.
), but I’d also like to learn strumming and such.
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