Welcome to your new life

I started playing acoustic guitar at 14, I stuck with basic music theory picked up from school and college and basically taught myself. My main reason for learning guitar was to accompany myself when I wanted to sing, I've enjoyed music and singing since I was very young. So first rule of learning guitar is; don't limit yourself to guitar! The more strings on your bow the better, each discipline will spur the other on and help to round you into a very accomplished musician someday.

With me, playing guitar didn't morph into anything serious until I split from my first band, it had become apparent to me that my basic understanding of music was holding my band back, I've got a decent voice but playing basic chords to back my lead guitarist up would only take me so far.

So I set about learning theory and the most important place to start is with Scales but as you know, there is a lot to learn and you can not expect to understand it all right off the back. the following wall of text will include things that you just need to be aware of, in no particular order to understand how music works. To get into the nitty gritty of your instrument you can just google 'how does an electric guitar work' its not that hard to understand and you'll definitely pick it up, don't let the enormity of the task put you off, eventually you'll find a nice practice routine and all sorts of new and cool ideas will come flying at you. you'll want to build on those ideas and by that point you will be a bonefide musician.

A guitar string is the same as any other instrument string in the fact that it is made, tensioned and tuned in such a way that when you pluck it it vibrates at a certain frequency. that frequency is recognised around the world as belonging to a Scale. That scale is called the Cmajor scale, it comprises of the notes A to G with gaps in between called sharps or flats, these gaps are called 'intervals' and are what gives the impression of a scale. The C major scale contains no sharps or flats and therefore starts with C, and ends on C. The note that you land on when finishing the Cmajor scale is C but it's in a higher register, an octave above. an octave contains 12 notes (A to G with the gaps in between, so A, Asharp (or B flat), B, (Bsharp or Cflat) C, Csharp (or Dflat) and so on, whist noting that when you get to E, the next note is F, there is no E sharp or F flat. this will make more and more sense the more you practice and learn so don't get too hung up on trying to get your head around that, these things will become clear the more you learn.

So I'm guessing you've heard the C major scale being sung in this manner; Do Re Me Far So La Te Do, you will recognise this and chances are if you're given which note to start on pitch wise, you will be able to sing the scale correctly. Congratulations you can already play the c major scale. Now google where middle C lives on a piano. its a white note, if you start with C and move right along the notes 7 times, you will have played the scale you just sang. Notice there is black notes that you are avoiding while playing the C major scale on keyboard, these black notes are the sharps and flats so when you learn the finger pattern required to play those notes on guitar you will skip a fret to account for the spaces where there should be a black note.

On a guitar the strings are tuned (from thickest to thinnest) E, A, D, G, B, E