alot of people i see here post things such as ”i taught myself piano its easy”
let me say any instrument is easy (&these are most likely the ramblings of people who have only played guitar a few months), but to properly play it & understand what the heck your doing (this helps your creative process when writing your own stuff or just in general) is another different matter.
i could be taught to recite out 10 basic piano tunes, but give me the likes of Mozarts music & ask me to use certain techniques that are heard on piano. i would fail (as would all the people claiming ”its easy” on their respective instruments)

the problem with teaching yourself guitar (or any instrument) is that alot of people give up they get frustrated. (supposedly 90% of self taught musicians quit whilst quoting statistics are generally wrong i wouldn’t put it past being a damn high figure)
also alot of people can ”play” guitar, ie bang out a few songs & intros eg starirway to heaven. But there is a notable difference heard between a self-taught guitarist playing a song & a trained guitarist.
guitarists are a dime a dozen, everybody plays guitar (heck i play guitar) however a decent guitarist is hard to find this is where you can benifit from lessons as most people don’t take lessons.

Lessons are definitely a great idea, a teacher can show you techniques & correct you. i still get corrected over things i do at my lessons.
alot of the internet resources aren’t that great, again it is alot of amateurs with bad technique posting who started out similar to you, or looking to make a quick buck.

every music autobiography i have read (& i read quite a fair bit of them as i LOVE music) the guitarist/any instrument, has gotten lessons at some point.
there are a rare few virtuoso (ie talented) people who didn’t get lessons but even at that they start practicing with other people who have got lessons & learn off them.
As somebody said those ”guitar for dummies” are great, however that is as a side tool to reference to. not to just teach yourself, at a glance you learn the basics but when you study those books they can get quite complicated & a teacher can clear any questions you have.
a teacher also encourages you to practice & gives you set goals.
Don’t get me wrong you can learn by yourself but if you are in any way serious about wanting to play music & want to get to a good level, i’d DEFINITELY suggest lessons. Also alot of people seem to start their music career out on guitar as it is such a famous instrument & lots of people own guitars in some form. Don’t be suprised if you feel like quitting guitar because everybody plays it after a few months it happens to alot of people, it doesn’t mean you aren’t musically talented.

PS try not to ask people to give you the chords to a song, its better if you can work them out yourself it creates an ear for certain notes. however make sure what you are playing is correct.
PPS: i read here an answer off somebody who was in a music college, she roughly said ”the teachers would cringe when they heard that a new ’self-taught’ musician was coming to the colllege, because the teachers all knew he/she would have to be retaught due to them having bad technique”

Rory Gallagher- Cradle Rock (Live ROCK/BLUES unbelievable guitar playing)

”Rory’s death really upset me. I heard about it just before we went on stage, and it put a damper on the evening” Jimmy Page (Led Zep)

Sources: bassist
experience in music (ie reading books, being out there etc)

Find a handful of popular songs that all use the same 2 or 3 chords. Teach those chords, then tell the student that they can now play a song. List the songs until they find one they know, then guide them a little bit to get them playing the chords in the right order with an easy strumming pattern. I think for a first lesson, that can probablly take up 10 to 30 minutes depending on the student.

Make sure you use some big, bold, clear diagrams, maybe 1 chord box per A5 piece of paper.

Before you get them to play the guitar though, you can just take them through the parts of a guitar for 2 or 3 minutes, breaking it down to the headstock, neck and body. Then break each of those 3 down further; tuning pegs, main part of the neck, fretboard, frets, inlays (and how to use the inlays along the edge of the neck, basically what frets the dots correspond to), then the parts of the body. Maybe explain the differences betwen an electric and acoustic.

When you’ve named parts of the guitar, explain that you can play different open strings (then strum and name the strings in order, E A D G B E = Eddy Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddy). Then explain that rather than just going from string to string, you can go from fret to fret (then play along the E string upto the 12th fret, then back down again). I believe that one thing us guitarists take massively for granted is that most people probablly have no clue how ’strings’ have anything to do with an instrument; it would seem odd to us, but if you’ve never looked at a guitar up front and personal, I imagine it would need a bit of explaining. So basicallly talk them through how you actually get different notes out of a guitar.

Now, before you get them playing a chord, maybe explain what a chord is; 2 or more notes played at the same time to create ‘harmony’. While your at it, explain that a melody is notes played one after another. I don’t know how in depth you’ll want to go on a first lesson, but I personally would explain that a scale is a group of notes that ‘work well together’, and the mother of all scales is the C Major scale. I would then say that the C Major scale has 7 notes, C, D, E, F, G, A, B. Then I would teach them the relationship between the C Major Scale and the C Major Chord (the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the C Major scale. Then I would teach them the C Major scale on their guitar.

Then I would tell them that there are different types of chords; Major (happy), minor (sad). And that there is a rule you can apply to the Major scale;

C D E F G A B
Major, minor, minor, Major, Major, minor, diminished.

Take the notes of the Major scale, make the first note a Major chord, the 2nd note a minor chord, 3rd note a minor and so on, as above.

I would tell them that this rule gives you a group of chords that work well together. I might then teach them the Dm and G, then find a song that contains those chords.

Then go on to teach them a song as I explained at the beginning.

Hope this helps.

I’ve taught a few people to play and I did a teaching and learning module on my English degree. I also teach children to sail. You have to assume you are an absolute master, so the things you might think are truly basic is all new and really hard to your student. The hardest thing about teaching guitar is that you will be going over things that you find really basic, and that can get boring, but if you enjoy sharing your knowledge, that doesn’t matter.

Good luck.

Edit: It’s also important to re-cap things regularly. Maybe test them on parts of a guitar at the end of the lesson (just the easy parts, that’s quite a full on first lesson lol).

So, my point… it’s good to have an actual instructor for the times you actually get stuck or confused, but if you find yourself learning better on your own, then it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do that, and every year or so, find another instructor to go over things, get some stuff cleared up, or learn some new tricks.

its so pretty.

if you decide to learn it, i would love to hear it! u can email me! =]

It depends on how much you practice. When I started, I practiced for at least an hour a day.

I recommend buying a book. I got one called, "Teach Yourself Guitar." It was very well written, and easier to follow than some YouTube videos, however, YouTube has definitely helped me.

Sorry I might have missed something…but also, here are some sites with good lessons:

http://www.justinguitar.com/

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/lessons/

Hope this helps!