As I wrote in The kink in the tuning, the guitar is designed and tuned to give the player a wealth of possibilities and approaches to making music. This repetition of the same notes and chords in different positions is also the reason the guitar seems so complicated.

Fortunately, the guitar compensates for this by allowing for movable chords, something keyboard players can only dream about. The first movable chords we learn as beginners are bar chords. I cant remember the last time I played a full bar chord -- my style of playing has no use for them -- but this move-ability applies to any fingering pattern on the fretboard. Every time you discover a new inversion of a chord, say a G major 9 over its III (B), you have also learned all the other major 9s over III, simply by moving your shape up or down the neck. Thats the beauty of the guitar. Take good advantage of it and train yourself to analyze ever thing you play and to apply it to all keys. Move these discoveries around, and add them to your musical vocabulary. This analytical approach to playing/practising sounds cold and boring, but it quickly becomes second nature.

The most difficult thing about learning anything is finding the lowest common denominator, some bottom line that everything else can be viewed against. As a beginner, I knew there was some underlying pattern to the guitar that could become just that: the bottom line, the least you could think about.

Once you know that, you can build back up as fancy as your fingers allow.