First things first. The day I got my first guitar I broke the high E string during tuning, so I bought a new set of Rotosound Yellows and used the following tutorial to restring my guitar.
Electric Guitar Setup : How to String a Fender Strat GuitarIn addition to this I didn't cut the string until I was happy with how all the strings were wound. I also gave a tug to each string to make sure that the ball was in the bridge properly.
Next, I wanted to start playing tunes, but not the standard boring songs from the books. I wanted to get right into rock and metal. Deep Purples Smoke on the Water seems to be the starting point for most, so I made it mine as well.
I used this great tutorial from Marty of GuitarJams How to Play Smoke On the Water - Beginner Guitar Lessons.
I then went in search of some more basic tutorials and eventually found this great set of tutorials by Gustavo Oliveira entitled "Absolute Beginner Guitar Lesson" and was perfect for what I wanted - A tutorial for somebody who has never played a guitar before and didn't know anything about them!
- Absolute Beginner Guitar Lesson Part 1 coveres the absolute basics and assumes that you know nothing about guitars.
- Absolute Beginner Guitar Lesson Part 2 Covers basic information including parts of a guitar, string identification, frets, pickups and so on.
- Absolute Beginner Guitar Lesson Part 3 talks about how to tune an electric guitar.
- Absolute Beginner Guitar Lesson Part 4 looks at different left and right hand techniques that are used while playing the guitar.
- Absolute Beginner Guitar Lesson Part 5 - How to play "I can't get no satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones and "Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison.
- Absolute Beginner Guitar Lesson Part 6 - How to play "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple. Also sliding.
- Absolute Beginner Guitar Lesson Part 7 - How to play "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin. Also Chords and Arpeggios.
- Absolute Beginner Guitar Lesson Part 8 - How to play "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin (cont.)
- Absolute Beginner Guitar Lesson Part 9 - Conclusions, frequently asked questions and demos.
I have since gone on to learning Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix from this video: How to Play "Purple Haze" on the Guitar and Purple Haze Guitar Lesson
And finally, somebody that explains what Power Chords are! It's all very well saying you do a D power chord, or convert this and that to power chords - but what are they!! This video was able to solve all that for me! Rock Power Chords
Some of the best tutorials I found came from martyzsongs, guitarvoicing, expertvillage and haho01
