What was the VERY first thing you learned on guitar?

[J Patrick]

.....What’d I Say...I must have played that riff a thousand times before moving on to learning chords....but I had the I IV V thing down...the first song with chords I remember learning was House of the Rising Sun....

[M19]

Secret Agent Man.

[Gordon Currie]

I got a Harmony Stella for my 9th birthday, along with a set of 10 or 12 lessons.

Instruction in 1966 was pretty basic and completely divorced from goals such as playing songs or getting ready to be the next Beatles.

I remember that I learned the pitch names of the six strings and how to hold a pick, plus a few non-musical single note exercises.
After six lessons and NO chords, I knew this wasn't going to get me anywhere useful, and I quit the lessons.

Within a year I dropped guitar and started playing sax. I got pretty good super fast, learned to read (single-lines) pretty well, and played in 5th/6th grade band.

Somehow, the guitar kept calling me, and I bought a Beatles Complete song book and proceeded to learn MANY DOZENS of chords over one memorable summer.
If I had started with chords and songs, I might have avoided the three year detour.

[TBman]

I was 9 and this is what I remember:

C chord:
xxx010

G chord:
xxx003

E chord:
0xxxxx

F chord
xxxxx1

[jschmitz54]

Gloria E, D, A

[boppy99]

I had a book with songs like "Streets of Laredo," "Wildwood Flower" and "Greensleeves," so one of those. Whichever was easiest...

[BluesBelly]

Secret Agent Man by Johnny Rivers

Blues

[Duck916]

The notes to the key of C.

[Lee Callicutt]

On Top of Old Smokey.

[Jaroboni]

Knockin' on Heaven's Door. D-G-Am

[StringMeUp]

Skip to My Lou...

https://youtu.be/XBkirfXqJgU

[BluesKing777]

I have mentioned the long winded story here before, but the short one is that I was in the right place at the right time when I was 8 YO and was given an acoustic when this wife of Dad's boss bought a new guitar!

But it all happened so quickly and I saw her play her new guitar for a moment, that is it....and then I had to figure out a number of things, like..what is it? What was she doing? Why does it sound so wonderful but so horrible? Why does my guitar not look like the Beatles' guitars?

So the very first thing I taught myself was bongos on the back! The guitar had a bag, and there was this thing in it! A Guitar book! Ohh, that hurts, doing that! All the strings and notes, cowboy position!

The guitar expert at school, and there is always an expert, isn't there, showed me and another couple of dopes how to play some 'riffs' on the low E string, so my first riff that I played for at least a year was a 'stylized' version of a conglomeration of the Satisfaction riff, Smoke on the Water and some Black Sabbath thrown in! Poor friends and relatives!


BluesKing777.

[darylcrisp]

Dust in the the wind, by Kansas.
I went to a local teacher who had a reputation as being a very good teacher, and he had won a couple contests for playing(electric) and got to spend a day with Van Halen and again with Lynard Skynard(and received some guitars with that).

He taught at the only local music store, I signed up for an opening he had, we met, we talked, told him I was interested only in fingerstyle and wanted to learn Dust in the Wind. He said ok. It went well, I am not a natural, have no music background, but in about 2 months he had worked thru the whole song with me, had taught me how to read tabs, learned a few chords along the way, but he taught me how to work all my fingers on the right hand.

next song was Blackbird, then Tangled up in You by Aaron Lewis(along with Zoe Jane).

that was a simple fun time.
d

[Wild Bill Jones]

When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.

[Ed66]

The intro to Simple Man at the ripe young age of 48. It actually helped me realize I was most attracted to fingerstyle playing.