Grab a circle of 5ths app and lean chords in these progressions.

I found an app called chord ai I don’t particularly like AI but an AI that can tell me a chord in any song. I kind of fuck with that.

Learn wonderwall by oasis and play it for everyone 😏

Depends on your goals. Two things are magic: playing with other people and playing live Other than that focus on the basics - always practice with a metronome. You can instantly tell who is ready to play together and who is used to used to doing their own thing all over the time signature.

If you want to get better, you have to practice every single day.

You’re going to suck at first, but then you’re going to suck less. You have to learn enjoy the process, which it sounds like you do, so great! I like to break up my play time into practicing something new and having fun; they’re both important.

One thing I’ve found is that keeping my guitar out and on the wall makes it a lot easier to get started playing, even if I don’t feel like it at the time. Once I’m about five minutes into playing, I’m into it.

Oh, and practice with a metronome. Most guitarists suck at rhythm (myself included). Using a metronome beats it into your head.

Hold the books and lesson videos for 6 months to a year. Learn by playing music you want to learn. Songs you love. Start with some easy 3-4 chords stuff. Get the strumming by playing along with the song. Add in a lick that you can manage. Gradually progress into more complex songs with new chords. Get comfortable with singing along. Enjoy it. Enjoy it enough that you want to play a bit more each day.

Practise by accompanying your favourite music. That way you don’t get hung up on the strumming pattern and focus on enjoying, which is what keeps you coming back for practice.

There are abundant beginner videos on YouTube that teach strumming. I think the important thing is to mix learning technique with just enjoying making music by any means.

(Source, self taught playing 20 years)

Just to add to my other comment, rocksmith is awesome if you have the reflexes for it. Otherwise, songsterr is great too. For learning strumming patterns I’d say relax your wrist and make sure your strap height is comfortable. I keep mine raised quite a bit to be able to hit high frets with ease. A lot of guitarists will disagree with me but use a thin pick and light strings.

Also, as I said in my other post adjust string action and practice everyday. I’ve been playing since I was a teenager and I play all styles of music. My forte is advanced lead stuff but my advice works for rhythm guitar as well. I’d say if your goal is rhythm you may be drawn to thicker picks, thicker strings, and lower strap height, but it’s really about what feels comfortable to you.

Also, if you have any interest learning fingerstyle you may want to start on a nylon string guitar. I used a guitalele at the beginning and the difference in comfort blew my mind. Now I only play steel string acoustic when I need to record fingerstyle acoustic stuff, but there’s a reason nylon strings are great for beginners.

If you need more advice about anything else guitar related just hit me up. I love passing down my knowledge.

Don’t watch any more videos. No more instruction and forced repetition of songs that already exist. Just play and play and play at least 10 minutes a day. Strum your fingers, listen to the sounds you are making, try to find pleasant ways to stitch together chords and strums into unique novel arrangements. Don’t try to memorize twinkle twinkle or your favorite song. Make something new with the pallette you have unlocked in yourself.

A lot of music instrument people are academic theorist in their mentality. It saddens me to see creative types take what should be beautiful expressions of spontaneous whimsy and turns playing into dry formalized literature. Theres a reason its called playing the guitar and not working the guitar.

If you spend your time trying to learn the ‘right way’ as defined by so called guitar experts, you’ll never experience learning how to play your way. Theres joy in finding new chords by chance, learning how to turn cacauphany into melody by sheer practice over the months/years and feeling the music come from inside. The art ends up more authentic and original that way, I feel.

Strumming patterns you’ll just develop a feel for. You can practice that against your knee while just casually listening to the song. An exercise you can do for this is to practice three-chord rock songs. A LOT of songs are written with a progression of A, D, Em. Two examples off the top of my head are Louie Louie and Wild Thing. The difference between them is the rhythm.

I’ve been playing guitar for 25 years now, I do know how to read sheet music from band class in school, but I’ve never combined those two skills. I’ve been handed sheet music for Piano or some other part that had guitar chords over it, and a lot of the more intricate pieces I know I learned via tablature. The nice thing about tabs is they can be fairly easily made with ASCII.

You want a fairly easy way to make yourself sound WAY more impressive? If you’re comfortable strumming chords, you can start picking individual strings instead. I like to use House of the Rising Sun as an example for this. The chord progression is Am, C, D, F, Am, E, Am, E. You can just strum along with a fairly simple rhythm, but, instead of strumming all strings, pick them individually as found in this tab. Your fret hand still does the exact same thing, but your pick hand does a little bit more. This song is a good introduction to this because your pick mostly goes “down” (physically toward the floor toward the higher strings) then back up a couple. It’s also a fairly easy introduction to finger picking.

Fun fact about House of the Rising Sun: It’s in common meter. Which means you can swap the lyrics for other common meter songs into it to interesting effect. Many of Emily Dickenson’s poems are in common meter. So is Amazing Grace and the theme tune of Gilligan’s Island. You can have a lot of fun mixing and matching lyrics with melodies. It’s a fun trick to have in your repertoire when you’re passed a guitar at a bonfire or something.

Convince yourself that you’re not improving because you need that one guitar, only to play for one month and let it catch dust afterwards.

Most importantely have fun. Most people will tell you to practice regularly, but that’s only possible if you genuinely enjoy playing. If you go for a daily routine of boring exercises, there’s a chance it will create a loathing for the instrument and the practice, whereas if you do a bit of everything (cool riffs & refrains, tedious exercises, wild experiments, etc), you will build up a virtuous & pleasant realtionship with your instrument, and you will pick it up every day without even thinking about it.

Try new songs that seem easy till you find one that actually is easy, drill it till you can do it decently, try another song and do the same. That was me 25 years ago and I still love to play.

Learn to read guitar tabs, listen to single parts of the song till you can play that part and keep going till you have each part.

I found it way easier with songs I liked. They were probably harder to play but it kept me interested.

A video of someone playing the song might help with the strumming pattern but you get an ear for it pretty quick.

The best advice I have for strumming patterns is to just listen to the song and try and just focus on the rhythm. Down strokes sound a little beefier and up strokes are a little more jangly. I’m terrible at identifying chords by ear but can get the rhythm down pretty much immediately. It just comes with time.

As far as playing songs I would not worry about playing just like the recording but just getting close enough that it’s recognizable.

The person who taught me put colored bits of tape on the instrument to denote basic chords like G, C, D, and Am. It really helped, using a different color for each one, so I could learn to move quickly between them and build the muscle memory I needed.

Practice regularly until you get blisters. Go on minimum amount of time until they’re good enough you can play some more until you build callus where you need it.