How to Learn Guitar From Scratch: A Step-by-Step Plan for Beginners

You can learn guitar in any order, but not every order works equally well. There's a sequence of steps that actually works - and it's worth following in order, rather than jumping straight to whatever looks most fun.

Don't wait for the 'right' guitar

Any guitar in working condition, with a straight neck and functioning tuning pegs, is good enough for the first few months of learning - the difference between acoustic and electric (see the dedicated article) affects comfort, not whether you'll actually learn. Waiting for the 'perfect' instrument before starting is the most common way to postpone learning indefinitely.

Step 1: posture and grip, before sound

The first thing worth learning isn't a chord or a note - it's how to hold the guitar and the pick (see the articles on posture and pick grip). Correct posture doesn't sound impressive, which is why it gets skipped so often - but it's exactly what decides whether your hand aches and tires in the first weeks, or doesn't.

Step 2: tune the guitar before you play

An out-of-tune guitar sounds wrong even with perfectly accurate technique - a beginner can't tell their own mistake apart from a tuning problem, which is more confusing than the technique itself. Tune the guitar before every session, not once and for good (see the article on tuning to standard E A D G B E).

Step 3: a handful of chords, not all of them

Five to ten open chords (see the article on your first chords) unlock access to hundreds of real songs - that's plenty for the first several months. Trying to learn many chords at once spreads attention too thin; it's better to get a few sounding clean than to know many only superficially.

Step 4: short daily sessions, not rare long ones

It's worth getting used to practicing 15-20 minutes a day, not two hours once a week (see the article on a practice routine), from the very start - it's regularity, not the length of any single session, that decides how fast you progress in the first months.

How long until your first played song

With regular short sessions, a simple song using 2-3 familiar chords at a slow tempo is realistically playable within 2-4 weeks - not perfectly, but recognizably. That doesn't mean everything gets easy after a month: chord changes and clean sound keep needing attention for a long while after - but the ability to play a recognizable song itself comes fast.

Try it in practice

Open the metronome