[owsley]

1. Learn scales and theory first, everything makes a lot more sense after that. the songs you learn will be in a pattern you recognize instead of being on random frets.

2. make an effort to do all the annoying little things your teacher tells you to right from the very beginning. its worth it, if you dont youll pay later. to get good you have to want to do these little things right.

3. play everything very very slowly at first. if you want to learn a song you should play it at 1/3 its normal speed. this is really important. if you are trying to learn a new song and are having trouble, play it as slowly as you have to to get every single note right. sometimes this means really, really slowly, but thats how you learn.

4. dont get discouraged. I started learning over a summer vacation when I had all day, and I played for hours everyday, and I would sit there thinking "what the [censored], I'm not getting better". I actually was improving a lot, I just wasnt comparing myself over a long enough period. imagine if you were teaching someone poker and telling them about the long run... in learning guitar, the long run is really long too. youll end up getting discouraged anyway, I did, but then after two months of plugging away, day after day, youll randomly try to play a song you never could and you will be able to.

5-100. dont get discouraged

three good books to start with:

the guitar handbook, denyer- start with this book

mjs total scales techniques and applications- teaches you everything about scales. it is good for after you have a good grip on the basics. it isnt that well written or laid out, it took me a while to understand it but this is everything you need to know about scales. there is a [censored] of info in this. it is slow going, but every hour you put into it is easily, easily worth it. these two are indispensable to me.

hal leonard guitar fitness- this is what i used, a ton of good practice exercises