Thinking about picking up a guitar
Personally, I love both.
I recommend the CAGED open chords. Good toolset for playing stuff, and easy to learn.
In any event, we need a status report. For all we know the strings have eaten Umbran and he can't play anymore.
No, I haven't been eaten. 
The instrument stays in tune, which is nice. My little mini amp picks up the tic tic tic of the radio pulses from my smartphone when I'm trying to tune, which is funny, but doesn't get in the way, thankfully.
It has been basically just practice, practice, practice. A half hour every day is what I've been able to manage, though I think I'll need more. I run the scales backwards and forwards, work the riffs, practice the chords. I admit it can take me a lot of work to pick up physical skills, so I have to have patience until my hands start remembering, so to speak.
I am having some difficulty getting fingering for the strings to ring clear - this may be my real issue in learning the chords, because I can't tell at first if I have the finger positions right, because they don't play clearly. I don't have skinny fingers, so unless I've got the tips of my fingers just so, I wind up touching the next highest string, muting it or causing a buzz. This makes transitions between chords especially difficult. I'll get it, eventually, but it will probably take me a while.
The instrument stays in tune, which is nice. My little mini amp picks up the tic tic tic of the radio pulses from my smartphone when I'm trying to tune, which is funny, but doesn't get in the way, thankfully.
It has been basically just practice, practice, practice. A half hour every day is what I've been able to manage, though I think I'll need more. I run the scales backwards and forwards, work the riffs, practice the chords. I admit it can take me a lot of work to pick up physical skills, so I have to have patience until my hands start remembering, so to speak.
I am having some difficulty getting fingering for the strings to ring clear - this may be my real issue in learning the chords, because I can't tell at first if I have the finger positions right, because they don't play clearly. I don't have skinny fingers, so unless I've got the tips of my fingers just so, I wind up touching the next highest string, muting it or causing a buzz. This makes transitions between chords especially difficult. I'll get it, eventually, but it will probably take me a while.
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ah, stubby finger syndrome. I got long skinny fingers, so I don't have advice for that.
For picking notes, you can afford a little slop so long as you cleanly fret the note you need. In fact, it is handy to have your fingers nub into the unused strings as it mutes them, in case they get struck OR to prevent sympathetic ringing (if you pluck a string, the other string may also sound, just through receiving vibrations from the struck string.
For chords, it is a bigger deal to fret them all correctly, as they all need to be correct to sound right.
One thing I've found that matters is where your neck/headstock is causes your fingers to have more/less reach.
If the neck is low, your effective reach is less, which means your fingers will come in at an angle to the strings, causing them to touch more. that's bad.
If the neck is higher (closer to your head), then your arm/elbow comes up into the neck, giving you the most reach for your fingers. This makes it easier to get your tips onto the frets while keeping the rest of the fingers clear of the strings.
Experiment with how you hold the guitar/situate the neck. Notice that rock star low is harder to reach and fret chords. Hold it like the early Beatles, up high and things get easier.
When you go to bed, mentally visualize the chords you know and where to place them. It's better than counting sheep and reinforces your knowledge about what to do, making it easier to remember those chords when you actually need them.
Keep up the good work.
For picking notes, you can afford a little slop so long as you cleanly fret the note you need. In fact, it is handy to have your fingers nub into the unused strings as it mutes them, in case they get struck OR to prevent sympathetic ringing (if you pluck a string, the other string may also sound, just through receiving vibrations from the struck string.
For chords, it is a bigger deal to fret them all correctly, as they all need to be correct to sound right.
One thing I've found that matters is where your neck/headstock is causes your fingers to have more/less reach.
If the neck is low, your effective reach is less, which means your fingers will come in at an angle to the strings, causing them to touch more. that's bad.
If the neck is higher (closer to your head), then your arm/elbow comes up into the neck, giving you the most reach for your fingers. This makes it easier to get your tips onto the frets while keeping the rest of the fingers clear of the strings.
Experiment with how you hold the guitar/situate the neck. Notice that rock star low is harder to reach and fret chords. Hold it like the early Beatles, up high and things get easier.
When you go to bed, mentally visualize the chords you know and where to place them. It's better than counting sheep and reinforces your knowledge about what to do, making it easier to remember those chords when you actually need them.
Keep up the good work.
When I first learned how to play a guitar, I was mostly playing power chords really fast. Easiest type of chord to play in a mindless/fast manner.
Initially it was fine if one is into repetitive punk rock or metal type of stuff. (Dunno about other music genres).
If one is into guitar solos played through a lot of distortion, early on I figured how to do all the basic stuff like two-note/three-note hammer-ons, pull-offs, and tapping.
The hardest thing for me initially was learning how to do alternate picking proficiently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_picking
Ah power chords. I like them.
However, they can be a shortcut to not mastering the basics. That's why I hadn't mentioned them yet. Plus, I don't have a grasp on what Umbran wants to play.
He'll get to power chords around Lesson 5 or so in the About.com series. they are easy and fun. But let's get him hooked on phonics first with some cowboy chords.
In my first few years of playing guitar, I wasn't particularly well disciplined. I didn't pay attention to any music theory related stuff like scales, chord construction, keys, etc ...
I was mostly just playing fast fingering patterns which didn't conform to any particular musical conventions, which I thought sounded "neat" or "cool" and/or were "complicated" looking. In hindsight, I was largely doing the equivalent of "fretboard gymnastics" in a stream-of-consciousness manner.
Though by the time I was more interested in stuff like scales, chord structures, etc ..., I was already proficient in doing stuff like alternate picking, and could do stuff like "sweeping", bending, etc ... and transcribing guitar riffs from listening to a song by ear.
I was mostly just playing fast fingering patterns which didn't conform to any particular musical conventions, which I thought sounded "neat" or "cool" and/or were "complicated" looking. In hindsight, I was largely doing the equivalent of "fretboard gymnastics" in a stream-of-consciousness manner.
Though by the time I was more interested in stuff like scales, chord structures, etc ..., I was already proficient in doing stuff like alternate picking, and could do stuff like "sweeping", bending, etc ... and transcribing guitar riffs from listening to a song by ear.
Most of all, you should be playing what you like and/or want to play. There is no point in learning to play stuff you are not interested in.
If you're not interested in stuff like scales, chord constructions, etc ..., then you shouldn't waste your time on it.
(Some may call this undisciplined "bad wrong fun").
If one is not in school or a music program, there's no "one true way" to go about learning to play anything.
If you're not interested in stuff like scales, chord constructions, etc ..., then you shouldn't waste your time on it.
(Some may call this undisciplined "bad wrong fun").
If one is not in school or a music program, there's no "one true way" to go about learning to play anything.
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