Flamenco can be a very challenging and technical style, but it doesn't have to be. I don't know your background, but if you just want to have fun and sound good quickly, try this.
Get a nylon string guitar. It doesn't have to be a flamenco guitar per-se, any classical will do. But steel string acoustic guitars will absolutely not work for this style. The sound is wrong and the strings are too close together.
Learn the Andalusian cadence. It's the chords A minor, G, F, and E, in that order. This is the characteristic "Spanish" sound recognisable by everyone, and is in fact a fundamental building block of Flamenco style (por arriba). The chords can be played barred or open, your choice. You can instead start in D minor (por medio) if you like.
Practice a basic rumba strumming pattern until it is drilled into your muscle memory. The easiest is to just strum, counting from 1 to 8, and on beat 5 slap the strings instead of strumming.
Do not use a pick. There are several right-hand techniques you'll want to learn. The most important is probably rasgueado ("gypsy strumming"). You essentially flick your fingers so that each one strums the strings in rapid succession. It's challenging at first, but try to make the timing in between fingers roughly even. Next is tremolo: rapidly plucking the same string with alternating fingers, while playing bass notes with your thumb. This is a common classical guitar technique too, but Flamenco takes it further, often using 4 plucks instead of 3. Actually flamenco technique breaks many classical guitar "rules".
Once you want to start mastering more specific styles ("palos"), just get some tabs and work through them. You'll probably want to start with soleares, alegrias, farruca, fandango. Unlike classical guitar, nobody will look down at you for using tabs (or learning by ear) instead of notation. Paco de Lucia famously does not read notation.
Hope this helps. Have fun!
hiisukun 13 hours ago [-]
This is a good comment! But I'll add that many classical learners use tab, and I think there's absolutely no shame there. The music is what counts, and I think rarely would someone look down on a learner.
Guitarists love other ppl learning or playing guitar!
shermantanktop 17 hours ago [-]
If you're on HN, you've probably experienced the dopamine rush of encountering something new, understanding it well enough in short order, applying it, and seeing results; or building something that others engage with in the same way. Or being especially good at math, or science, or computers, seemingly without much effort.
Music is (for most people) not like that. For getting proficient at instrumental music, the skill floor is high, progress is slow, and only comes through hard boring work which rewires your brain. Teachers tell you to do boring things, and say things that don't make sense, and you will be frustrated. Eventually you realize that you can do things you couldn't do before.
There are whiz kids who don't appear to experience this, but I think they do; they are just wired to not hate it as much as the rest of us, and are doing it when their brains are nicely plastic.
When I say "getting proficient at instrumental music" I mean to differentiate from learning how to play Wonderwall or Louie Louie and having a great time singing along. That's absolutely valid, it's a great place to be, and that love of the instrument forms the basis of further progress.
polishdude20 16 hours ago [-]
As a guitar player of 15 years myself, when I was learning to play, I never thought of the exercises as boring or tedious because I learned in order to play a specific song. Getting good at that song made me motivated enough to continue learning the fundamentals.
shermantanktop 15 hours ago [-]
For me, I plateaued. I didn’t think I had, because I was learning new material, but I wasn’t getting better. And I had kids and other priorities and so enjoying myself was enough. I then finally found a promising musical situation, admitted my stagnation and got a teacher (after decades without). My primary goal is to be a better musician, with instrumental skill a secondary concern. The grind I am talking about is mostly about this new learning phase for me.
The whiz kids might not even think to mention it, but they wanted it enough to drill scales & chords every day. You can make big investments into physical dexterity long before you understand what's going on, and it will pay off if you stay with it.
windowshopping 16 hours ago [-]
learning to play wonderwall gave me a lot of joy, and i actually didn't really find it to be trivial for a total beginner either. maybe i'm just bad but it took me like six weeks of practice to play the song smoothly.
dansmyers 3 days ago [-]
To learn a folk style you really need a mentor that can connect you to the oral tradition. Rather than scales and technical exercises, focus on learning rhythm and complete pieces. If there is a flamenco dance school in your area, see if they offer guitar lessons and the opportunity to accompany dancers.
Always remember: The notes are not necessarily the most important thing.
That said, there's a lot of overlap between flamenco and traditional classical guitar, so learning classical pieces (particularly by Spanish composers) will help build your fingerstyle technique. Solo Guitar Playing by Frederick Noad was the book I used for classical practice when I was younger.
Also check out pseudo-flamenco pieces that have been recorded by rock and country guitarists, like "Mood for a Day" and "Malagueña", and smooth flamenco crossover artists like Ottmar Liebert and Jesse Cook. You might find these too diluted from "real" flamenco, but they can be another entry point for building up your playing.
TZubiri 8 minutes ago [-]
Of course there isn't a single way, here's a couple of questions that might guide your choices, alo
1- ABCDEFG or Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si? The first is more typical in the US, the rest in Europe and RoW
2- Tabs or Sheets? Sheets are more classical, tabs are common in pop and rock.
You mentioned gypsy and flamenco style, I think those are very folklorish, so I think video would be better suited (there's just no notation for fast strumming patterns), and tablatures would be appropriate.
But to get a true connection to flamenco you need to find people that play flamenco, whether IRL or online. I don't think it's a style of music that is learned through textbooks, as you mention, perhaps not even in tabs, but I may be underestimating the art.
reactordev 17 hours ago [-]
As someone who plays flamenco, it starts with finger style.
Playing with your hand NOT resting on the strings or body, using TPIMRp (little p is pinky), master playing patterns. Travis picking is popular. Boogie woogie is too where you play three notes together with PIM and playing the bass line with T.
A pinching pattern or claw hammer is another method. Once you’ve mastered (I mean, can play Eric Clapton and Co) it then take it into the minor keys and learn the directional flamenco picking. Where you flick RMI downwards striking your fingernails, following it with your T in a downward pluck, then pulling IMR upwards. Some people reverse this but it’s always the same when it’s repeated. Eventually you’ll be able to picado like a pro. Malagueña watch out.
Your finger nails are now important. Learn about shaping them with a filer or getting gel tips. Your girlfriend can help in this department.
As others have said, there’s no short cut, only practice and patience. Eventually it will click.
And before you say “I don’t have a girlfriend”, by the time you’re good enough that fingernails are important, that will no longer be an issue.
atmosx 4 days ago [-]
Not just you. Brian May brought Steve Howe in to execute the complex flamenco-style classic guitar in “Innuendo” while Brian himself played the main electric guitar parts.
Ps. Practice. There is no other way. What you are trying to do is hard. Takes practice and dedication.
thorin 3 days ago [-]
Spanish guitar is hard, there is not much crossover between spanish styles and modern pop/metal etc. It probably has more in common with classical music, but then the picking is completely different. It's not that Brian couldn't have done that solo, he's an amazing player and can play in multiple styles, it sounded like from the interview they just wanted to add a different perspective to the track.
If you want to listen to something I think very few people in the pop scene could replicate I would suggest listening to Paco De Lucia. Of course people like Al Di Meola who played with Paco were able to crossover into that world but he is a virtuoso in his own right.
A lot of the books come with digital downloads of PDFs of the sheet music / tabs along with the author performing the pieces on MP3s.
Get set up with a footstool, and position yourself in front of a computer screen with the PDFs open to practice.
mingus88 17 hours ago [-]
I don’t think doing this on your own will be effective. I would only recommend these Mel bay books if you have a teacher to work with you on it
And even then these Mel Bay style beginners books are probably good for 6mo at most before you should be playing actual music
Flamenco in particular is something else. How you grow your nails, how you use your wrist, all this stuff is something you don’t want to spend hours at home doing only to realize you built a bad habit that will never sound right or even worse lead to RSI
InfiniteLoup 4 days ago [-]
I once had a mystical encounter with a drunk guy on a train who advised me to learn Spanish guitar before turning 30.
However, my path preordained by the universe was interrupted when I watched a professional flamenco tutorial and was put off by the teacher's long fingernails, which are apparently required to play, but which I found absolutely repulsive.
I used JamPlay more than 10 years ago, when I was about 15. I learned really fast. They teach you music theory too.
I always found really good resources to learn the things I wanted to learn back then, not sure how I did it!
ringeryless 12 hours ago [-]
first of all, stop being an outsider and calling it "spanish guitar" and start listening to decades of recordings made available via the internet.
do you want to learn flamenco techniques? there are a zillion youtube tutorials on rasgueados, on alzapua, on picado, etc.
i find that you can watch the legends and masters directly playing their music, and watch their fingers.
song forms, chords, all can be learned if you know what it is you seek to learn.
i taught myself flamenco guitar to quite a high level of competency during the pandemic, and i can promise you that with a few hours practice a day, and some passion for listening to and discovery of new music, you too can achieve what normal mortals consider to be extremely developed skills, because, truth be told, it's like any human endeavor: you can get competent quickly, but it will take a lifetime to master.
playing a musical instrument is a different modality than verbal wankage and supposition about this or that, aka it's the opposite of an online comment, IMO
ringeryless 12 hours ago [-]
i can promise you that classical theory is not how 99% of flamenco players learned what is essentially an oral tradition folk art.
OTOH, classical guitar, if that is what you are after, is exclusively a repertoire music, you learn it by playing songs.
here, get some guitar sheet music and start playing.
they include numbers for fret positions above the staff of notes, sometimes, and they often indicate which finger to pluck with on the right hand. you literally can just follow the directions on the box
sgwizdak 16 hours ago [-]
I've been playing classical guitar for a bit. A teacher who specializes in that style is your best option, but teacher quality can vary quite drastically and can be hard to manage if you're a busy professional. For an online, asynchronous resource, https://classical.guitarcorneracademy.com has been great for along with occasional check-ins with an online teacher.
YZF 14 hours ago [-]
I'll give my 2 cents as someone that picked up guitar playing about 10 years ago. I don't play flamenco but I'm familiar with some of the techniques.
I would suggest:
- Get a guitar that you think you will like picking up and playing. Whether it's electric, steel string acoustic, classical, or flamenco. Whatever rocks your boat and you like the sound. Have it somewhere where you can just grab it and play a little when you feel like it.
- Learn the basic open chord shapes and some simple songs. Don't worry about flamenco technique for starters.
- Once you have some very basic control of the instrument and you know a few shapes and forms (e.g. 3-6 months) you can pick up some easy tutorials of basic flamenco chord progressions and try those out. You don't need a ton of fancy chords or technique to get some flamenco like sounds out of your instrument.
- You will need to build what people call "facility". This is your ability to move your fingers quickly, put them in the right places, etc. this needs to happen with a combination of drilling and playing progressively harder pieces. I would still say you don't have to aim for super complicated flamenco techniques yet but you can learn something about spanish scales and chord progressions and start experimenting.
- Learning some simple fingerstyle songs/patterns will likely help if you do decide to specialize more in flamenco.
- A teacher will certainly help and may be necessary at some point. Probably a good idea to take some lessons early on just to get corrected on basic mistakes. Then you can go back to playing/practicing on your own and come back again when you feel you need more help.
- A book is really hard to learn from when you don't know anything. Videos are better. But you will need feedback from a person at some point.
- Record yourself playing. Challenge yourself to learn progressively harder pieces (in whatever style).
- Practice with a metronome to improve your sense of time.
- You will need to learn some theory, scales etc.
- You also need to develop your ear. Listen to music and try to figure out notes/chords etc. Sing a tune and try to play it by ear.
It's a journey but it's easy to get to a point where you can play some simple songs and have fun and build from there.
r14c 16 hours ago [-]
A teacher is helpful, but they will make you do scales too. Honestly though learning the tradition from someone directly is the best way to learn an art style. Plus a person can explain better to you why scales matter and push you to get through the tedium so you can start doing fun stuff like playing songs.
random_moonwalk 4 days ago [-]
I recommend finding a good teacher who specialises in Flamenco if that's where your interest lies. They can help you navigate the various rhythms and techniques which are quite particular to the style. In-personal ideally, though I'm sure you can find someone who can teach via video call too.
Technically, you paused and could restart this afternoon or next year or twenty years from now…
I've recently become interested
Unless you are guitar virtuosic, against adult standards non-beginner level Spanish guitar competence is years ahead of you. That doesn’t mean you can’t have fun (and you probably should). But doing things you don’t do well is the only way to learn. Good luck.
Flamenco (traditional) uses a unique rhythm called a "compas", 12 beats, and "should" be practiced with dancers stomping the counterpoints.
Flamenco Guitar Basic Techniques (Juan Serrano)
Flamenco Guitar Method (Gerhard Graf-Martinez)
...it's a loooong road, and the climax of it has you buying a new (specifically for flamenco) guitar, as it resounds better in a crowded dance hall or theater.
You have to decide to learn to play by ear, by tab, or by notes, and as I mentioned in my blog post, you have to struggle through a long period of time "nobody thinks I sound like anything worth a damn".
As an adult student, you may end up in a recital going up against 11 year olds and thinking to yourself "Damn! Their twinkle twinkle little star is kicking my versions ass!"
It's a loooong road, I've been an off and on student for ~15 years, mostly self-taught, classical with Spanish/Latin influences.
Antonio Briebesca, Paco de Lucia, Johannes Linstead (Para La Habana), Gypsy Kings (of course), Rodrigo y Gabriela are all (non-flamenco), and some are slightly more modern flavor of the direction your question was probably in.
Shoot for the stars and you'll eventually be able to bang out a few decent tunes after a year or two. Good luck!
lucas_membrane 11 hours ago [-]
Back when I learned guitar, guitar players came in only two flavors -- Spanish and Hawaiian. One was a Spanish guitarist if one played the guitar with the face of the guitar vertical (strings forming roughly a vertical plane), and a Hawaiian guitarist if the guitar was oriented horizontally, typically in the lap of the guitarist, with each forearm also approximately parallel to the face of the guitar pointing forward from the guitarist. Nowadays genres are all mostly obscurely defined, fragmented, swirling around, and trying to become world music, which is wonderful, and almost everyone is trying to be one of a kind, so good luck figuring that all out and finding a happy place in it. Don't be like me; if you are not in the water you are not learning to swim -- just play!
bradgranath 17 hours ago [-]
If you gave up on scales, you aren't going to learn any kind of guitar other than churchband boomchunk.
minebreaker 17 hours ago [-]
This comment may be strongly worded and thus downvoted but true. To achieve a certain level of technical excellence, tedious and repeated practice is definitely necessary.
r14c 16 hours ago [-]
harsh but true take. building the foundation for playing guitar requires a lot of repetition. especially for flamenco and related styles. you have to be able to do different complex movements with both hands at the same time without thinking about the details. everything has to become second nature, and you only get there by doing your drills.
bosswalrus 17 hours ago [-]
do the scale exercises
metalman 17 hours ago [-]
here is a contemporary performance, where singing and clapping , with guitar, shows another side of spanish music that is more focused on having fun, very very competent fun, but just for the joy of it, and the guitar is not that intimidating....
All snark aside, ways to learn (already listed) include teachers, books, videos and the most difficult of all your ear. If music theory isn’t your bag, pick a song and learn to play the first phrase. Then the next phrase, then the next. That’s how they did it in the old days. One song at a time. One bit at a time.
If you want shortcuts to playing guitar enough to impress many, you can skip (some) theory and learn a few chord shapes.
To play like the masters will require dedication to craft impossible for most. I applaud your efforts.
4 days ago [-]
Rendered at 17:42:43 GMT+0000 (UTC) with Wasmer Edge.
Get a nylon string guitar. It doesn't have to be a flamenco guitar per-se, any classical will do. But steel string acoustic guitars will absolutely not work for this style. The sound is wrong and the strings are too close together.
Learn the Andalusian cadence. It's the chords A minor, G, F, and E, in that order. This is the characteristic "Spanish" sound recognisable by everyone, and is in fact a fundamental building block of Flamenco style (por arriba). The chords can be played barred or open, your choice. You can instead start in D minor (por medio) if you like.
Practice a basic rumba strumming pattern until it is drilled into your muscle memory. The easiest is to just strum, counting from 1 to 8, and on beat 5 slap the strings instead of strumming.
Do not use a pick. There are several right-hand techniques you'll want to learn. The most important is probably rasgueado ("gypsy strumming"). You essentially flick your fingers so that each one strums the strings in rapid succession. It's challenging at first, but try to make the timing in between fingers roughly even. Next is tremolo: rapidly plucking the same string with alternating fingers, while playing bass notes with your thumb. This is a common classical guitar technique too, but Flamenco takes it further, often using 4 plucks instead of 3. Actually flamenco technique breaks many classical guitar "rules".
Once you want to start mastering more specific styles ("palos"), just get some tabs and work through them. You'll probably want to start with soleares, alegrias, farruca, fandango. Unlike classical guitar, nobody will look down at you for using tabs (or learning by ear) instead of notation. Paco de Lucia famously does not read notation.
Hope this helps. Have fun!
Guitarists love other ppl learning or playing guitar!
Music is (for most people) not like that. For getting proficient at instrumental music, the skill floor is high, progress is slow, and only comes through hard boring work which rewires your brain. Teachers tell you to do boring things, and say things that don't make sense, and you will be frustrated. Eventually you realize that you can do things you couldn't do before.
There are whiz kids who don't appear to experience this, but I think they do; they are just wired to not hate it as much as the rest of us, and are doing it when their brains are nicely plastic.
When I say "getting proficient at instrumental music" I mean to differentiate from learning how to play Wonderwall or Louie Louie and having a great time singing along. That's absolutely valid, it's a great place to be, and that love of the instrument forms the basis of further progress.
The whiz kids might not even think to mention it, but they wanted it enough to drill scales & chords every day. You can make big investments into physical dexterity long before you understand what's going on, and it will pay off if you stay with it.
Always remember: The notes are not necessarily the most important thing.
That said, there's a lot of overlap between flamenco and traditional classical guitar, so learning classical pieces (particularly by Spanish composers) will help build your fingerstyle technique. Solo Guitar Playing by Frederick Noad was the book I used for classical practice when I was younger.
Also check out pseudo-flamenco pieces that have been recorded by rock and country guitarists, like "Mood for a Day" and "Malagueña", and smooth flamenco crossover artists like Ottmar Liebert and Jesse Cook. You might find these too diluted from "real" flamenco, but they can be another entry point for building up your playing.
1- ABCDEFG or Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si? The first is more typical in the US, the rest in Europe and RoW 2- Tabs or Sheets? Sheets are more classical, tabs are common in pop and rock.
You mentioned gypsy and flamenco style, I think those are very folklorish, so I think video would be better suited (there's just no notation for fast strumming patterns), and tablatures would be appropriate.
But to get a true connection to flamenco you need to find people that play flamenco, whether IRL or online. I don't think it's a style of music that is learned through textbooks, as you mention, perhaps not even in tabs, but I may be underestimating the art.
Playing with your hand NOT resting on the strings or body, using TPIMRp (little p is pinky), master playing patterns. Travis picking is popular. Boogie woogie is too where you play three notes together with PIM and playing the bass line with T.
A pinching pattern or claw hammer is another method. Once you’ve mastered (I mean, can play Eric Clapton and Co) it then take it into the minor keys and learn the directional flamenco picking. Where you flick RMI downwards striking your fingernails, following it with your T in a downward pluck, then pulling IMR upwards. Some people reverse this but it’s always the same when it’s repeated. Eventually you’ll be able to picado like a pro. Malagueña watch out.
Your finger nails are now important. Learn about shaping them with a filer or getting gel tips. Your girlfriend can help in this department.
As others have said, there’s no short cut, only practice and patience. Eventually it will click.
*EDIT* https://youtube.com/shorts/IfOFLtf0h8c Paco De Lucia is a great one to study.
So if Brian May can’t do it.. it’s fine.
YT Video: https://youtu.be/X468z5AwefI?si=G929iSPdDwzr4QkK
Ps. Practice. There is no other way. What you are trying to do is hard. Takes practice and dedication.
If you want to listen to something I think very few people in the pop scene could replicate I would suggest listening to Paco De Lucia. Of course people like Al Di Meola who played with Paco were able to crossover into that world but he is a virtuoso in his own right.
A lot of the books come with digital downloads of PDFs of the sheet music / tabs along with the author performing the pieces on MP3s.
Get set up with a footstool, and position yourself in front of a computer screen with the PDFs open to practice.
And even then these Mel Bay style beginners books are probably good for 6mo at most before you should be playing actual music
Flamenco in particular is something else. How you grow your nails, how you use your wrist, all this stuff is something you don’t want to spend hours at home doing only to realize you built a bad habit that will never sound right or even worse lead to RSI
However, my path preordained by the universe was interrupted when I watched a professional flamenco tutorial and was put off by the teacher's long fingernails, which are apparently required to play, but which I found absolutely repulsive.
I used JamPlay more than 10 years ago, when I was about 15. I learned really fast. They teach you music theory too.
I always found really good resources to learn the things I wanted to learn back then, not sure how I did it!
do you want to learn flamenco techniques? there are a zillion youtube tutorials on rasgueados, on alzapua, on picado, etc.
i find that you can watch the legends and masters directly playing their music, and watch their fingers.
song forms, chords, all can be learned if you know what it is you seek to learn.
i taught myself flamenco guitar to quite a high level of competency during the pandemic, and i can promise you that with a few hours practice a day, and some passion for listening to and discovery of new music, you too can achieve what normal mortals consider to be extremely developed skills, because, truth be told, it's like any human endeavor: you can get competent quickly, but it will take a lifetime to master.
playing a musical instrument is a different modality than verbal wankage and supposition about this or that, aka it's the opposite of an online comment, IMO
OTOH, classical guitar, if that is what you are after, is exclusively a repertoire music, you learn it by playing songs. here, get some guitar sheet music and start playing. they include numbers for fret positions above the staff of notes, sometimes, and they often indicate which finger to pluck with on the right hand. you literally can just follow the directions on the box
I would suggest:
- Get a guitar that you think you will like picking up and playing. Whether it's electric, steel string acoustic, classical, or flamenco. Whatever rocks your boat and you like the sound. Have it somewhere where you can just grab it and play a little when you feel like it.
- Learn the basic open chord shapes and some simple songs. Don't worry about flamenco technique for starters.
- Once you have some very basic control of the instrument and you know a few shapes and forms (e.g. 3-6 months) you can pick up some easy tutorials of basic flamenco chord progressions and try those out. You don't need a ton of fancy chords or technique to get some flamenco like sounds out of your instrument.
- You will need to build what people call "facility". This is your ability to move your fingers quickly, put them in the right places, etc. this needs to happen with a combination of drilling and playing progressively harder pieces. I would still say you don't have to aim for super complicated flamenco techniques yet but you can learn something about spanish scales and chord progressions and start experimenting.
- Learning some simple fingerstyle songs/patterns will likely help if you do decide to specialize more in flamenco.
- A teacher will certainly help and may be necessary at some point. Probably a good idea to take some lessons early on just to get corrected on basic mistakes. Then you can go back to playing/practicing on your own and come back again when you feel you need more help.
- A book is really hard to learn from when you don't know anything. Videos are better. But you will need feedback from a person at some point.
- Record yourself playing. Challenge yourself to learn progressively harder pieces (in whatever style).
- Practice with a metronome to improve your sense of time.
- You will need to learn some theory, scales etc.
- You also need to develop your ear. Listen to music and try to figure out notes/chords etc. Sing a tune and try to play it by ear.
It's a journey but it's easy to get to a point where you can play some simple songs and have fun and build from there.
Technically, you paused and could restart this afternoon or next year or twenty years from now…
I've recently become interested
Unless you are guitar virtuosic, against adult standards non-beginner level Spanish guitar competence is years ahead of you. That doesn’t mean you can’t have fun (and you probably should). But doing things you don’t do well is the only way to learn. Good luck.
From "Noad" there's a Spanish Study that is on track with your goals: https://youtu.be/p_YHVf_pan4
Flamenco (traditional) uses a unique rhythm called a "compas", 12 beats, and "should" be practiced with dancers stomping the counterpoints.
Flamenco Guitar Basic Techniques (Juan Serrano)
Flamenco Guitar Method (Gerhard Graf-Martinez)
...it's a loooong road, and the climax of it has you buying a new (specifically for flamenco) guitar, as it resounds better in a crowded dance hall or theater.
You have to decide to learn to play by ear, by tab, or by notes, and as I mentioned in my blog post, you have to struggle through a long period of time "nobody thinks I sound like anything worth a damn".
As an adult student, you may end up in a recital going up against 11 year olds and thinking to yourself "Damn! Their twinkle twinkle little star is kicking my versions ass!"
It's a loooong road, I've been an off and on student for ~15 years, mostly self-taught, classical with Spanish/Latin influences.
Malagueña (Juan Serrano) - https://youtu.be/18rSqD5My40
Guardame las Vacas - https://youtu.be/O-LzDvRRxNU
Antonio Briebesca, Paco de Lucia, Johannes Linstead (Para La Habana), Gypsy Kings (of course), Rodrigo y Gabriela are all (non-flamenco), and some are slightly more modern flavor of the direction your question was probably in.
Shoot for the stars and you'll eventually be able to bang out a few decent tunes after a year or two. Good luck!
https://www.npr.org/2021/04/20/988256921/c-tangana-tiny-desk...
https://blog.google/technology/ai/musiclm-google-ai-test-kit...
If you want shortcuts to playing guitar enough to impress many, you can skip (some) theory and learn a few chord shapes. To play like the masters will require dedication to craft impossible for most. I applaud your efforts.