Some people say it is difficult to learn guitar, others say it really isn't that hard. The ones who say that it isn't hard are the ones who have actually learned to play. They have chosen the style they want to learn and have disciplined themselves to set aside a part of every day to practice. They have learnt to read sheet music or tab and they have found out about the rewards of playing music for themselves and for their friends.

Go out and buy yourself an acoustic guitar, download some chord charts and guitar tabs from the internet, get yourself a guitar tuner, and try teaching yourself. That's the beginning, seeing what you can learn. The advantage of learning the guitar by yourself is that you are very rarely by yourself for very long. There is always somebody who has learned a little bit of guitar themselves and who is ready to share their wisdom with you.

If you decide to learn from videos available on the internet you will be learning from a great variety of guitar teachers. You are benefiting from the experience of guitarists from all over the world you would otherwise never have known about. If you are able to devote the time to practicing what you learned from these videos your progress as a guitar player will be quite rapid.

If you begin to learn the guitar you will learn about callouses on the fingertips, about the need to keep your guitar in tune at all times, and about how you need to take your friends' advice with a grain of salt. You could try taking some lessons with a guitar teacher. If you can afford that, you will always gain something from the experience, even if the teacher isn't much good. Or you could keep teaching yourself, making use of guitar tutors that you can buy at your local music store the free guitar lessons on video that you can view on the internet.

Learning the guitar by yourself is one of many ways and the big thing that is missing is structure. It is very difficult for one person to set himself a disciplined practice regime. So along with learning guitar technique and music, your progress as a guitarist will also include self-motivation and making use of reality checks where ever you can find them.

So if you get yourself a nylon string guitar, learn some chords and some strumming patterns, you'll be off to a good start. From there you can branch out to learning solos or riffs or fingerpicking.