Originally Posted by Ed Garces

Check around for a good guitar teacher in your area and get a private lesson. If you pick the right one (and that would be a challenge in itself), he would design a program for you and he might even comment whether the guitar you got would be the right model to start with. Once you have a program to follow, it would be up to you to spend a lot of time on it. The practice sessions will make you or break you.

When I was a kid, I was lucky enough that our neighbor sat down with me all the time to teach me guitar and ukulele because he saw the glow in my eyes. It wasn't an effort for me at all because I was so excited and fascinated about the way this guy played the guitar that I wanted to be like him. I went on to play classical quitar in my older years but the past 10 years I have been exclusively playing Hawaiian-style guitar (non-traditional tuning) which we call "slack-key" in the islands.

My advice to you is to put away the beautiful Ybanez GSA guitar in its case for now so you won't scratch it and go buy yourself a $100 nylon string traditional guitar and use it for your lessons. When you find that playing guitar is for you, I guarantee you that you will have more than 2 later in your life anyway. While you are at the store to buy the other guitar, also buy a guitar holder. This is where you will keep your beginner guitar, not in a case, and place it in a very accessible area.

I found that I practice more when the quitar is staring at me all the time. I now have my Rain Song guitar and my ukulele within arm's lenght of my desk so that I can reach out for one of them while I'm reading the X5 World threads, surfing the net, or waiting for downloads!