Question

can someone tell me how to play guitar

Answer 1

It always bothers me when someone asks me if I can play, for I always have a hard time answering.
It is indeed a very intriguing question. I’ll tell you how I look at it, hope it helps.

There are two scenarios here, one of which you’ll find yourself in:

1. You can say, that you know how to play the guitar when you can play whatever you want.

“I can play the guitar.”
“What can you do?”
“I can improvise over a I-IV-V Blues progression.”
“But can you play sixteenth notes at 240 bpm.”
“No, but who cares. It’s not my style. All I want to do is play the Blues.”

My point is, a lot of people think of ‘being able to play’ from a technical standpoint. 
Sure it is that, in part. But beyond that, it’s all about what you want to play. So if you can play everything that you want, you know how to play. Even if you can’t do all the fancy stuff.

Robert Johnson could play guitar. So can John Petrucci.
So if you fall in this category, you can fearlessly state that you can play.