beginner guitar question

[dizong]

This is the way I learned (I'm completely self-taught).
First, be freaking motivated. I REALLY wanted to learn Hendrix and Zeppelin and nothing was going to stop me. But fortunately, I also wanted to learn to play Ramones songs. Naturally, that's where I started although I learned bits and pieces of other, more complex songs along the way.

Learn at least some basic music theory. Know what A through G means. Learn what sharp, flat, major, minor mean. Learn the names of your strings.

I think that learning chords is one of the first things you should do.

Learn the open C, G, D, A, E chords. With practice, you'll be able to switch between chords much more easily. But you have to practice it. Once you can play those in succession, you've just learned to play "Hey Joe". You've also learned how to play a portion of "A Day In The Life".

Learn to play power chords. Many Ramones and Who songs are power chords based. These are actually much easier to play than the above open chords.

Learn barre chords, both major and minor. This, in my opinion, is a major stepping stone. You can play almost any song's rhythm portion with barre chords.

Along the way, you'll develop calluses. You have to because your fingers will likely be torn up and even bleed initially. But it will get better.

Simultaneously, learn strumming technique. Initially, all downstrokes will be acceptable but eventually you will have to learn to alternate with various rhythms and such. I don't know how to teach that except that it just comes with diligence and learning to play songs. Just be fluid with the right hand, no need to squeeze the water out of a guitar pick with a death grip.

As for soloing and such, I don't have much advice except much of my playing is based on pentatonic scales and blues licks. There are other scales out there, but I'm not a music theorist and can't really give you more info about that. But once you improvise with this foundation, you'll sound pretty good in most cases.

Oh, and learn tablature to help you learn some songs. It's great to jam but I don't think people try to learn guitar primarily to jam (at least at the outset). Make it a goal to learn those songs that you've wanted to play, no matter how impossible (except for Dragonforce).