What is the first step to learning guitar?

Question:I just got a guitar? What should I learn first? Second? Third?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I just got a guitar? What should I learn first? Second? Third?

A lot depends on you ultimate goal.

You can, either, prepare yourself to learn music theory, reading musical notation and building chords. This can be very hard and frustrating, often requiring a good instructor and lots of practice while you learn to play. The end result will be a more qualified musician, able to play pretty much anything you want.

Or, my favorite approach when teaching beginning guitar, is to figure out what kind of music the student wants to play, and to get them started on making music right away. One of my goals, during the very first lesson is that the student is sent home with a song or two under their belt for them to practice and improve on.

For this method, I recommend picking up a basic chord book, showing the chord names and diagrams. From there, a student can find a song book, containing some of their favorite music. I recommend a student look for a song book with a matching album, so that he or she will have an audible reference for the melody, tempo and to help them listen to where the chords change.

Once they've begun that, I have the student work on finger and flat picking styles, so that they are not stuck with boring up and down strumming moves.

This is also a fairly successful method for someone learning and teaching themselves. However, the fastest and BEST way for a self taught guitarist to IMPROVE on his skills is to find like minded musicians to "jam" with. One learns very quickly from someone more advanced, if only to keep up.

A few simple chords

I would invest in a few lessons to get you started and to prevent any bad habits that could impede your playing ability. You don't need to take many, just enough to teach you the proper chording and strumming technique.

Pick the guitar up. Decide to play "right handed" that is use your left hand for chord manipulation and the right hand for strumming. Trust me. Right handed is better or more practical since 99 percent of electric guitars are right handed. So after you get your hands on a guitar and decide to be right handed, then sign yourself up for lessons. You will learn faster than on your own.

Learn the "open" or "cowboy" chords (G,C and D) first. You will be able to play thousands of songs with these three easy chords.
Practice switching smoothly between these chords.
Then add a few more such as E,Em,A,Am,Dm.
Next learn the Major and Minor scales.
I'd start with the Minor scale in the key of "A" it starts on the fifth fret. It's easy. and you can mess around with it. And it will sound good.
Just goggle for a bit.
YouTube has some cool videos for beginners.
Good luck and don't give up!
"Cause it's a long way to the top, if you want to Rock N' Roll"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

I surprised no one has mentioned this yet. The first thing you should learn how/what to do is tune the guitar properly. Buy a digital tuner. Learn the pitch for each string so you ear recognizes the note after time.

Learn the basic notes on the fret board - this will make learning chords and scales a breeze.

Thirdly, learn the basic major and minor chord shapes and positions on the neck.

After that, scales, scales and more scales. And a lot of practice time.