OK, so I'm going to take another whack at learning to play. A few years ago I bought a Squier Strat and tried to teach myself but being active duty left me with very little practice time and I ended up selling everything. Now I'm going to retire this year and decided to give it another try. Without going deep into the reasons why, I'm a lefty and my options were very limited. I bought an SX Deimos that just arrived yesterday. I plan to start all over again and would just like a sanity check from some folks here. Lessons are not an option at this point because I work 14 hr days and weekend lessons are over the top where I live.

I've read, re-read, and read some more on the forum here and my plan is to start by learning the open chords C,A,G,E,D,(the acronym got my attention I'm military) Em, and Dm. I'm sure this will be several weeks worth of practicing for me but I do have some questions. Is there a suggested series of progression to follow with chords before moving to scales? Are there scales of greater influence than chords? How about barre's? Basically what I am asking is if you were to begin all over again, how would you progress?

thanks all

Greetings whizzer and welcome to chordbook. You already know you'll find everything you'll need to become the next guitar virtuoso. I'm a beginner so what i'll suggest is how i would start were i to start again. I've done that about 8 or 10 times now, buying, selling, gifting guitars along the way. My last comeback was about 5 years ago and i started with...perhaps appropriately...an inexpensive student model classical guitar. I found chordbook and my journey began...i lurked for about a year i think and in that time i practiced chords till my fingers bled. Sometimes 8 hours continuous. This would have been boring except that at the same time i put a binder of songs i know and like together that i found online where the chords are over the lyrics and one can see where the changes take place, for example, where the chord is placed over or before a word in the lyrics.

So starting over knowing what little i know now, i would do that again because having chordbook and the chordfinder plus my binder of many songs with all kinds of chords kept me interested and kept it fun. Once i could sing and play at the same time (not well) i thought i'd go no further but i have. I got a theory education right here in chordbook from our own Old Tele Man as you may have noticed if you read the archives. I thought i'd just stick with strumming and singing songs i like (in private) and that i'd be happy but now i'm moving on again and i spend a lot of time with scales and improv, further learning my way around the guitar neck. I used to play pretty much at the nut (frets 1 through 3) and was fine with that. Now i want to learn the notes per fret as far as i can reach on my latest classical and it's going along.

Throw the Fmajor grand barre chord in your mix and you'll be able to play all the other grand barres in time as you learn the names of the chords per fret, for example, the F barre moved up to the fifth fret would be an Amajor chord and so on. It was suggested to me early on to put aside excuses not to play grand barre but i'm way past over that now and i'm comfortable playing 8th and 10th fret grand barre chords without thinking about it much...it becomes unconscious after a while and the associatied muscles get really strong and the brain and fingers know right where to go to 'grab' a barre chord anywhere on the neck.

About practicing. I don't think you'll need to practice more than an hour each day but i think everyone will agree that if you skip a day it's like they said in the service, you'll have to 'retrain'. The beauty of practicing is that if you make it a year without missing days (unless you just can't help it) they say you'll play guitar forever. About progressions, once you work with scales more and define the notes in them you'll see the relationship between scales and chords. That almost answers your question. If you're playing electric, say rock, blues and related, many use the Aminor pentatonic scale and it's easy to remember and fun to work with. Speaking of fun...that's key....keep it fun...then like everyone keeps telling me, 'practice what you know, practice what you need to know and try something new each session'...that could be a new chord or scale and in time a new song. For a progression that is also a good warm up, try Aminor, Cmajor, Dmajor, Fmajor (barre) back to Aminor, then Emajor twice and then it starts over. You can just start by a rhythmic slow strum for each chord in the progression until you can change easily to each and on to the next. Hope some of this helps and please ask questions if not clear and someone will have ideas and help.

Also, notice that there is a chat room...a lot of great free lessons are available there from a number of the guitar heroes that hang out there.

GuitarZen

Thanks GZ. I had an idea that my answers to chords, scales, and barres would answer themselves with time but, like a true American I was looking for instant gratification. Your comment about having chords with lyrics laid over them is a great idea. I'm heading to google right now to find some.

Thanks again

GZ great post as always. Whizzer congrats on retiring soon.
my  thoughts are sure go ahead be American learn some scales too. you will soon find that certain scales sound good with certain chords. i am hooked on twelve bar blues that is a great way to learn some real expressive guitar and know one of the most (used ) progressions of our time.
i looked up the ax your using very nice looking instrument. How is the set up on that guitar out of the box? did you get the brown coloured one? that is a great find set neck and emg pickups for that price seems like a good deal. i am guessing it is a pretty heavy ax too? what kind of amp did you restart with?

Welcome Whizzer and congrats on your retirement.  I'm 60, retired and lovin' it.  I started to do the git thing about 9 months ago.  GZ and the rest of the people on this site are great if you can get through some of the BS that flies around.

His story is about the same as mine as far as how I got started.  An old friend of mine that has played for 40+ years got me going.  He and I get together every once in a while over a few "refreshments" whenever I need something new to learn.  He's my "coach" not teacher.

Like GZ I have a loose leaf binder that I keep songs in that have the chords and lyrics together.  I've found a number of sites that has these that I download and print for my binder.  the one I use the most is:

http://www.chordie.com/browsesong.php/a.php?filter=

Being able to find songs I know with simple chords I know keeps it FUN.  To me that is the main thing.  If it AIN'T FUN, go find somehting else to do.  I do plan to eventually progress to finger style/picking.  But right now I'm saticefied humming to myself as I play (If I sang I'd get banished to the garage and Northern Wisconsin is a bit COLD this time of year.).

Again, welcome and KEEP IT FUN,

Dean

Appreciate the well wishes on the retirement Cricket and Dean but I'm just leaving active duty. I'll have to go find a real job somewhere now. The way we have been runnning since 9/11 I can't keep up. The operations tempo is too much for this old soldier and it's time for me to step aside and let these young guys have it. To hear me talk you wouldn't think you were hearing a 39 yr old say it lol.

Dean - thanks for the link and you are 100% correct. Fun is what it wasn't for me the first time and I ended up putting it down and walking away. The whole reason I came to this site and this forum was the amount of info and how you guys always have time to post a reply to the other folks.

Cricket - I have a 15 watt Line 6 spider I'm plugged into. I could spend the next 3 years just playing with that thing if I let myself. As far as the axe goes, I spent a long time researching and reading reviews. It seemed to me that the SX reviews were much better if you got decent pickups. Youtube is also an ecellent resource and there were plenty of guys playing SX guitars. I wanted an LP style this go 'round so I got the Deimos with the EMG selects. Yes I got the brownish one and its on the heavy side, around 10 lbs. So far the only complaint is the pick guard appeared white online but its actually a light shade of orange (as well as all of the other plastic). Pretty ugly if you ask me. I'm 6'3" and this guitar seemed a good fit. Big. heavy, and huge frets. As far as set up goes, I haven't clue. I know there is fast play and whatnot but I honestly couldn't tell you anything about it other than what I've read.