When i first started playing guitar i wanted a acoustic and wanted to learn strictly rhythm, but quite the opposite happend i bought a Yamaha specifica nice starting guitar to have, and lernt the blues scale or minor sclae what ever its called. since then i can do nothing but whale along to songs in the solo, and i find my slef now just learning chords and strving to become a better rhythm player. Ideas become clearer when you know about chords and how scales are made up form chords bla bla bla there for if you did get a gutitar teacher woudl make life soo much easier to understand the conepts behinde scales and modes so i would have to say Get a teacher, will make ur life alot easier ;)