When playing/learning guitar, when do you play “chords” or strings within those chords?

Question

I don’t really understand how to play guitar or even how to approach learning.

Do you just memorize chords? When do you play individual strings instead of a full strum? Are certain notes and chords assigned to different keys?

It seems way above my head lol.

Help.

In: Other

Answer 1

Ideally start with learning chords after you learn to tune your guitar and knowing which string is the E string, A string, D, G, B, E. It’s going to feel stupid and unnatural. Pick a simple chord where you strum every string like the G chord to start with. Get your fingers placed right. Start strumming up and down. It’s gonna take a while for this to feel and sound natural. Maybe hum a little melody along with it. Once you get to where you can strum up and down and your fingers can press down without other strings buzzing and sounding awful, you can pick another chord. Maybe the D chord. Do the same thing. And once you can do both of those, try strumming the g chord, and then switching to the d chord. Then add another, maybe an A chord. What will happen is your fingers will start remembering shapes for these chords. And then they’ll remember how to go from one shape to another for a different chord.

Once you’ve got these three, you can play surprisingly a shitload of songs. Now we can get into different strumming patterns that aren’t just up down up down up down. From here, it’s up to you. It’s a long long process early on. But if you like it, and need the distraction from your parents yelling at each other all night, lock yourself in that bedroom and get after it. That old guitar can become a real good friend someday.