Down with the flu this morning, so am reviewing all the helpful comments people have made. In the process, noticed Marion's question about "combining guitar with singing" This is one of those items I only want to spend a couple of minutes on in order to introduce a couple of ideas:

1) encourage people to start singing and humming along with their playing as soon as it feels a bit comfortable and

2) option of recording their 4-beats-to-a-measure guitar playing on, say, "Skip to My Lou" and singing along with that.

Over the years I've watched people really struggle to integrate singing with their playing after they already know how to play competently and, in some cases, very well.

- Merritt