[AnPeter90]

1. Obviously a decent guitar with a good setup.
2. A good friend that has played for years.
3. A string winder.
4. A guitar tuner app for your phone or a clip on.
5. GuitarPro (teaches timing, sight reading. Assumes you own a computer).
6. A TrueFire lesson or two (Truefire provides GuitarPro AND PDF files)
7. A reference book for chords, learning notation and tab.
8. Patience and desire to learn.
9. A book or a good link to the Pentatonic scales.
10. Did I say patience?

[dknitt]

11. Glenlivet 18. If not for you then to aid in finding #2.

[thesteve]

Originally Posted by AnPeter90

1. Obviously a decent guitar with a good setup. 2. A good friend that has played for years. 3. A string winder. 4. A guitar tuner app for your phone or a clip on. 5. GuitarPro (teaches timing, sight reading. Assumes you own a computer). 6. A TrueFire lesson or two (Truefire provides GuitarPro AND PDF files) 7. A reference book for chords, learning notation and tab. 8. Patience and desire to learn. 9. A book or a good link to the Pentatonic scales. 10. Did I say patience?

1, 4 ands 7 sure. The rest...I dunno.

[darfaz]

I've never used a string winder.

[Austinn]

I learned with a crappy, cheap guitar and YouTube. Once I got better, I upgraded. Don't spend money on a nice guitar until you know you'll follow though with it.

[martinedwards]

1. Obviously a decent guitar with a good setup.
My 1st guitar was literally lifted out of the trash. it was not good, but I wanted to learn
2. A good friend that has played for years.
Nope alone in a bedroom
3. A string winder.
not in 35 years of playing. never. not once
4. A guitar tuner app for your phone or a clip on.
the piano downstairs and the basic ability to find "E"
5. GuitarPro (teaches timing, sight reading. Assumes you own a computer).
35 years ago? no. ever since? again no
6. A TrueFire lesson or two (Truefire provides GuitarPro AND PDF files)
see above
7. A reference book for chords, learning notation and tab.
Now this I DID have
8. Patience and desire to learn.
Oh yes!
9. A book or a good link to the Pentatonic scales.
nope
10. Did I say patience?
yes you did.

so it appears that we disagree a little!

[Ben Toast]

1. Obviously a decent guitar with a good setup.

Not entirely. I've gotten great tones out of cheap guitars and low-end setups. A lot of it has to do with how you use what you have.


2. A good friend that has played for years.

Not sure how this factors in. I'm primarily self-taught.

3. A string winder.

Not a fan of them, actually; I prefer to go it by hand.

4. A guitar tuner app for your phone or a clip on.

I do have a Snark, but there are many other methods of tuning. Rack tuners, tuner pedals, or even ear tuning. Did you know a US landline dial tone is a natural F#?

5. GuitarPro (teaches timing, sight reading. Assumes you own a computer).

Nah. Not necessary at all. Actually a waste of money.

6. A TrueFire lesson or two (Truefire provides GuitarPro AND PDF files)

Again, not necessary.

7. A reference book for chords, learning notation and tab.

These are very helpful. I'll give you this one.

8. Patience and desire to learn.

Absolutely.

9. A book or a good link to the Pentatonic scales.

Similar to #7.

10. Did I say patience?

I believe you did, though I'm no doctor.

[dogfood]

Originally Posted by dknitt

11. Glenlivet 18. If not for you then to aid in finding #2.

hahahaha

[Giga Hertz]

Originally Posted by Ben Toast

5. GuitarPro (teaches timing, sight reading. Assumes you own a computer).

Nah. Not necessary at all. Actually a waste of money

Yes and no. There are free alternatives like TuxGuitar, but I quite like how GP6 works. For everyone: definitely not even close to a requirement. But I've used it a lot to compose and arrange music, and learn specific pieces that having just plain-text tab which can be harder to follow.

It's a great aid, for sure, but not a necessity, I concur. But it's not really a waste of money either, if you're actually going to use it (in my case my brother-in-law bought it for me, so I can't say I'm complaining anyway).

It was definitely of great help when I was doing my high school exams and had to rearrange some music for my band.

[darfaz]

Originally Posted by AnPeter90

1. Obviously a decent guitar with a good setup.

One characteristic of cheap guitars (especially acoustic) that I have found is that they don't stay in tune well. There are some things I can deal with- high action, uninspiring tone, sharp frets, but if an instrument literally cannot hold a tune, it is worthless to me.

[Art]

As has been pointed out several times already, those 10 things are not all necessary. I learned on a borrowed guitar, which was decent, but only had the aid of a book, and a borrowed tuner. Now, in the age of YouTube, not even the book is needed.

To be fair, I already had a multi-instrument musical background, as well as some music theory under my belt.

[jthomas1600]

I would agree that a decent guitar with a decent setup is a huge plus. I would also say that some of your other points have some validity. But I would say the biggest thing is learning how to practice. It's too big of a subject to get into it too much in a single post but there are definitely productive and non productive ways to practice.

[Ehud_]

Originally Posted by Giga Hertz

Yes and no. There are free alternatives like TuxGuitar,.

Hmm, curiosity overwhelms me! I'm a linux user, I'm going to have to look into tux guitar now!

[Giuseppe]

Top 10 things needed to learn to play the guitar:

1. A guitar

/end

[Giga Hertz]

Originally Posted by Ehud_

Hmm, curiosity overwhelms me! I'm a linux user, I'm going to have to look into tux guitar now!

It's not quite as rich in features as GP6, but it does the job quite well.