Your first week with a guitar, honestly

This is the week most people quit, so here is a plain plan with no motivational filler.

What is true about week one

• Your fingertips will hurt. That is normal and it stops within two to three weeks as light calluses form. Short daily sessions beat one long one.
• Chords will buzz. Buzzing means a finger is touching a neighboring string or is too far from the fret. Slow down and place fingers one at a time.
• Ten focused minutes a day is genuinely enough to make week two feel different.

The chords to start with

These are the shapes the PickMyPath tier table marks as the gentlest first-week set:

Two of these use only two fingers. Start with Em and Am, then add one shape per day, not all at once.

The one skill that matters: the change

Playing a chord is easy once your fingers know it. Switching between two chords in rhythm is the actual skill. Practice one pair at a time: strum once, switch, strum once, switch. Count how many clean switches you get in a minute, then try to beat it tomorrow.

Aim at a real song by day four

Do not wait until you feel ready. Two-chord songs exist exactly for this: see songs you can play with two chords. Playing one real song badly teaches you more than twenty drills done perfectly.

The PickMyPath app does the sequencing for you: mark the chords you know and it hands you the next real song that needs only one new one.

Let the app do the sequencing

PickMyPath is free and runs in the browser. Mark your chords, get your path.

Open PickMyPath