Learning to play guitar

[BassMasterK]

Well man...you've gotten a wide range of advice here. I guess mine is a combo of mostly what has been said. I make my living playing and teaching music. Here is my $.02:

Re: reading music. You mention you already know the notes from some piano. This may be enough for what you want to do. If you want a job as a session musician or a gun for hire, then yes, you should not just know how to read, but to read fluently and be able to site read charts and charts/w licks written out. If your just looking to rock out on guitar, play some songs, maybe start up a rock band in the future then you probably don't need to worry about it right now. I have played in several bands where the guitarist didn't read music and they were phenominal guitarists. Hell, even the Beatles didn't read music.

What you DO need is the ability to communicate on a basic level with other musicians. Know the names of the chords. Really important is the barre chords. Get the basic four down. Maj, Min, Maj7, Min7. Also, you said you don't know the names of the notes on your frets. Learn the names of the frets on AT LEAST your bottom two strings. If you took piano and know the music alphabet, it is really easy. This is very important because when you play barre chords, the name of the chord will depend on which fret your finger is barring across.

Scales: Maj and Min pentatonic, also I like my students to know the blues scale. When they get more advanced I want them to know both the standard Maj and Min scales as well. Soloing can feel shallow if it is only done in the pentatonic, although many great guitar solos have been made from them.

Learn to switch between chords IN TIME. This means you are not jamming on a chord like you are a guitar god and then have to pause for three seconds to find the next chord. Just pretent you are making up songs and move IN TIME between the chords you know. If you find two that are hard to move between...GOOD. Then just go back and forth between the two of them. Strum one. Then as quickly as you can, move your fingers into the position of the next one. Check for accuracy. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Keep going until you can move smoothly between them. Barre chords are very important, but so are the standard chords. If your playing a standard tuned guitar, make sure you are fluent with the ten to twelve chords that are easily played in root position (e maj/min/7, a maj/min/7, d maj/min/7, g maj/7, c maj/7 and probably one or two I am forgetting here...) the rest you can fill in with the barre chords.

Lastly, (and I could go on and on, but I am hitting the major points here) please, for the love of all things great and small, don't try to play stuff faster than you can play it (basically) perfectly. I can't tell you how many times I get someone who comes in for a first lesson and they want to show me what they can do and they start busting out like they are Yngwie Malmsteen and it sounds more like Flingvey Malmsteen with it just being a jumbled mess of misplayed notes and mispicked strings.

My piano professor in college had a great quote I use often. 'If you can't play it right when you play it slowly, why do you think you can play it right when you play it fast?'

Good luck and have fun.