Learn guitar to playing real songs in six months
Six months of daily practice — about 20 to 30 minutes a day on a single free course — gets a determined adult to clean chord changes, a half-dozen strumming patterns, and a stack of campfire-ready songs. Roughly 90 hours total. You will not be a guitarist. You will be playing.
6 months · ~90 hours · play 10 songs cleanly with open chords and basic strumming
1.JustinGuitar — Beginner Course
Justin Sandercoe has been teaching beginners online since 2003 and the curriculum is the closest thing the guitar world has to a settled answer. Grade 1 walks you from your first chord to clean changes between A, D and E; Grade 2 adds barre chords, Grade 3 fingerstyle and pentatonics. Each lesson is short, free, sequenced, and ends with a real song to play. Do every lesson in order. Do not skip ahead.
Free (the optional companion app is $10/month and worth it for the chord-change trainer)
JustinGuitar Beginner Course →2.A real acoustic guitar, properly set up
Buy a Yamaha FG800 or a used Fender CD-60 and pay a local shop $40 to lower the action. Cheap guitars with high strings are the single biggest reason beginners quit — fretting hurts, chords buzz, and you blame yourself. A $200 instrument that plays easily will outlast three $80 instruments that fight you. Add a clip-on tuner and a capo, nothing else.
~$200 guitar + $40 setup + $20 tuner and capo
Justin's first-guitar guide →3.Songs you actually want to play
Once you have four open chords, stop drilling exercises and start learning songs from Justin's beginner song list. "Horse with No Name", "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", "Wonderwall", "Wagon Wheel" — three-chord songs are not a stepping stone, they are the destination. Pick one new song every week. Play the ones you already know at the start of every practice. That is the entire job.
Free
JustinGuitar songbook →If this doesn't fit you
If you want electric guitar to play rock or blues, the same path works — Justin teaches both — but get a Squier Affinity Strat and a $90 Fender Mustang Micro headphone amp instead of an acoustic. The chord shapes are identical. The fretboard is easier. Acoustic builds finger strength faster, but if rock is what made you want to play, learning on the wrong instrument is how people quit.
Why this path
Most beginners cycle through YouTube channels, half-finish three different methods, and never get past the F chord. The bottleneck is never information — it is sequenced repetition. JustinGuitar is one teacher, one method, free, complete, and tested on millions of students. Pick it, ignore the algorithm, and play through every lesson. The hardest part of guitar is the first three weeks of sore fingertips. Get past that and the rest is just hours.