Do not confuse strumming a few chords on an acoustic guitar with learning to play classical music on the classic guitar. The fingering technicalities on the guitar far exceed that of the piano. The piano has more than thirty pieces of hardware between the players fingers and the actual striking of the strings….much subtlety is lost in the action. The guitar is a chromatically tuned instrument, and the fretted fingerboard makes learning the intricacies of harmonic construction much more visual.

The guitarist is in constant touch with the strings, like a harpist, and all of the special effects (chromatic glissando, portamente, pull-offs, hammer-ons, mordents, single-string tremolo, etc) are freely available and make the music come alive. There is no complicated mechanism between his fingers and the beautiful sound production. Transcriptions of the music of Bach, for example, take on a clarity not possible even with the keyboard. But make no mistake, all of these techniques take many years of study and a well-qualified teacher is the best route.

Having said all of the above, and seeing how eager you are to forge ahead, I can at least recommend a self-study book to get you started:

"You Can Teach Yourself Classic Guitar" by Will Bay (a Mel Bay publication for about $12.)

Cliff E. (classic guitarist)

It’s do-able, then, but of course I’m no expert, and with professional help you would advance quicker and with proper technique. You’d also, most likely, get much further than someone trying to learn alone in a shorter amount of time. You’d also have to be very determined, or else you’d give up. I’ve already pretty much given up as I’m not a huge fan of guitars.

And I’m not very good. My skills aren’t impressive. For a pianist with no knowledge of guitars, impressive enough. But as a guitarist? Kind of laughable.

But then again, it’s probably more down to the individual – your own talent, determination, and passion. I am a self-taught violist, but I can actually play properly because I love the instrument so much. Then again, I’m better at the piano in which I’ve had professional help – but I’ve also been playing for longer.

Conclusion – it’s all very subjective If I were you, I’d give it a go – what’s the worse than can happen? It might be fun; you might be a virtuoso in the making.

There is no "best" style, it’s all personal preference. Anyone who claims a certain style is superior to another has deep-rooted insecurity problems. You will find masterpieces and virtuoso players in ALL styles.

The problem with classical guitar is that many people who teach classical guitar or write books have very strong opinions about what is "proper" and "correct" and what is not. For example, some teachers think TAB is evil because you’re looking at numbers instead of notes. Well, if you know what those numbers mean, then they read like notes, so what’s the difference? You certainly can’t put the notation for hammer-on, pull.off, string mute or pick scrape using staff unless you want a messy looking page.

What the classical guitarists seem to overlook is that full staff (bass clef and treble clef) was written for piano. There’s one note on the piano for each note on the staff, Staff also works for most instruments like clarinet or harp because on those instruments, you can’t play the same note in more than one position. But on guitar, that one note can be played in many different positions. If you read TAB, someone has already figured out the best position, so TAB for guitar is like staff for piano. Some classical guitarists with many years experience can play directly from staff because they have their "favorite" finger positions for certain notes. But I think TAB is better for the rest of us because if someone has already messed around and come up with logical fingering, why spend your time reinventing the wheel?

So, I found classical guitar rather cumbersome because I spent more time reading staff and then working out the fingering on guitar than I did playing. Because I played classical piano, I almost gave up playing classical guitar because I got so fed up mapping the fingering for guitar. That’s probably what led to metal guitar, however, because metal is based in classical music, unlike rock, which is based in blues.

But regardless of what style music you prefer – jazz, metal, classical, blues, funk – there is one book which slays them all and if your guitar teacher hsn’t recommended it, then get him/her a copy too. The book is FRETBOARD LOGIC SE. It will help you understand the guitar from a non-biased perspective, show you what you REALLY need to know to play well, and then when you want to solo, you have acquired the knowledge and skill to do so.

I’ve read just about every guitar book on the planet and FRETBOARD LOGIC SE is the only one I keep in my studio.

A short answer to your question may be found at: http://www.learnclassicalguitar.com/ This is a good place to start your journey.

Have fun and remember, "Rarely do words alone adequately express the emotions inside, it’s the accompaniment that embellishes them with passion. Even when you play as poorly as I." — JonBouye