Here are the first thing that comes to mind,
if you’re interested in starting to play guitar:
- C Major scale, first position. Everything you need is right there and it’s easy to spell.
- C Major scale on the the A string, ditto- and you can start to see how the neck works (incidentally you’ve just played “Joy to the World” backward so that’s a bonus).
- Hand-friendly C chord which is the 1 chord for C. You’ve heard of 1, 4 and 5 chords; a ton of folk, rock, country and bluegrass tunes use these chords, and the C is a great place to start.
- Hand-friendly F chord which is the 4 chord for C. F is tricky but you can play it in a bunch of ways right at the top of the neck so no worries if you can’t make a barre chord yet, you can get away with a three-finger F chord by playing F, A and C notes. Keep at it.
- Hand-friendly G chord, which is the 5 for C so a ton of folk, rock, country tunes- pick your poison.
- D chord, using the open D string. You can ignore the 5 and 6 strings, just to get started.
- E chord – usually the first chord most of us learn for some reason :-). And even easier, Em (minor) which you can get by lifting your finger off the first fret of the G string.
- G chord, also hand friendly. Now you have the 1,2, 3, 4, 5 and the 6! G at the top of the neck has 3 open strings, so you can get away with 1 finger on the 3rd fret of the 1 string if you have to, just don’t play the 5 & 6 strings.
- Now add a B chord: like an A only move towards the body 2 frets, and play the 2,3 and 4 strings). That’s a pretty simple and friendly introduction to moveable chords right there! So that makes nine things.
- for 10, I’d say find a song you want to learn and do that! And remember: how do we eat a elephant? One bite at a time naturally, so don’t try to swallow the whole damn thing at once (unless you are a giant boa-constrictor who wants to learn to play guitar for some reason) Regular folks, we take small bites, and of course, after a while we have eaten a suitcase-sized piece of elephant. By which I mean, the smart money’s on the guitar player who pares the parts of the song down into smaller, more easily manageable chunks.
Mainly, don’t worry about what other people tell you about this stuff, including me. just have fun and make music how you want, and know that if it sounds good to you, it’s gonna sound good to other folks too!
There is no down side to starting at any point, afaikt!
Very best luck to you, fellow guitar player!
Resources for the above are here