Best way to learn acoustic?

elvistheking44

My wife got me an acoustic for christmas last year, and aside from learning Happy Birthday for my daughter and the intro to smoke on the water, I know nothing else. Is the best way to learn to take instruction or can a book and DVD do just as good?

Thanks

Lukin66

I've been learning too....the posters here are awesome about helping a newbie out.

elvistheking44

Are you taking lessons? Or going alone?

mca47

I'm self taught, been playing for about 3-4 years now.
If you are serious about it and really want to learn, I would recommend taking some lessons. You can do it on your own, but it will take a lot longer and you can fall into some bad habits on technique.

Start by learning all open chords. Learn their transitions (G to D to C...etc.). From there, I'd start learning some scales.

BinFrog

I recommend learning your basic chords, some power chords, and the major scale BEFORE taking lessons. Take lessons with the basics down and have your instructor show you where to go from there. Don't waste $20 a half hour learning the very easy stuff you can do on your own. There are tons of sites that show you basic stuff and give you easy songs to learn like Knockin' on Heaven's Door and Rocking In The Free World.

Rhyno

I started about 2 years ago. When I first started out, I took some community ed guitar lessons which were really cheap, but the instructor was still decent. It was a group class.

Now, I am just teaching myself with a few books and online resources.

The biggest piece of advice I've gotten was to make sure you practice at least a little bit every day. Even if you can only fit in 15 minutes...try and do some scales or chord progressions to keep your hands/fingers in shape.