Congrats on taking up guitar! You aspire to a most rewarding form of self-expression (and attention-getting!).

I’m a former guitar teacher (5+ years), and I’ll tell you the truth. It may sound discouraging at first, but it’s better you know up front so you can prepare yourself mentally. This is gonna be harder than you thought. It’s time to get tough and show what you’re made of.

• Bottom Line: You’ve got to have 4 or more days a week in which you can clear your head and practice at least 1 hour. You must find the determination to stick with this. Otherwise, give it up now. And you’ve got to be very patient with yourself. Give your skill time to develop. It will come. After a faithful month, you probably sound better than you think. Give it a real 6 months of faithful practice before you decide it’s not working.

• Steel strings: An exquisite torture eventually producing superior results. Keep playing till your fingers feel like they’re bleeding (they’re not), then rest 1 minute and keep going. After 3 weeks you should have good callouses and little pain (if you’re practicing enough). Now you’re free to think about music instead of pain.

• Chording Without Thinking: Take two chords that go together (C-G, C-F, G-D, E-A, etc.) from one of your practice songs. Practice switching from one to the other and back, one strum each. Go slightly faster each time until you reach your top speed, and see how long you can keep it up. Make this technique part of every practice. In a few weeks, you’ll be able to change very quickly, and without looking. Now you’re starting to get good at this (and it’s getting fun, isn’t it?).

• Strumming Like a Drummer: You, like most people, may have a hard time keeping a smooth strumming rhythm going. Get good at chord changes first, so you can concentrate on strumming without having to think about chords. You probably clap in time just fine, so think of strumming as clapping double-time. Pick a medium tempo song and strum down instead of clapping. Once you’ve got the feel of it, keep the same rhythimg going and start to add up-strums in between the down-strums. Just make sure you keep the same rhythm going no matter what. Be the metronome. Once you’ve got this down, your friends will start to think you can actually play that thing. And more importantly, you should be really starting to enjoy it yourself.

• Full Mastery Will Come: Don’t worry about that yet. Just get real good at playing at the right tempo and keeping it regular. Make small adjustments to find your own style. Be sure to keep with a style that others can sing along to and play along with. A lot of your joy in this will come from sharing the joy of music with others. You’re on your way now!