Good online resources for improving guitar/music skills?

[Pungnan]

Don't know about online resources but.......

what follows is a massive simplification, but.....

depending on the style of music it's normally pretty simple to jam along with a band in a given key.

Whilst this is not musically correct in the strictest sense the key basically refers to the root (or first) chord played.

So, in the key of E the starting chord will be E. (Probably E major). You then build off that.

Blues usually follows the pattern I, IV, I, V, IV, I (based on notes in the scale of E major) giving E, A, E, B A, E.

Folk, r&r, gospel & country are all similar to this, and it only gets complex if you play Jazz.......

If you want to 'solo' learn the blues scale pattern and just move it around the neck for each song so that the first note matches the root/key of the song.

Instead of looking for online resources I'd suggest just listening to loads of music (start simple with the blues) and play along. It'll all make sense before long.

Didn't expect my first ever post to be about music, but from reading up on here I can safely say I know more about music than I do about IR35....

[Jog On]

Guitar tricks have some good free introductory lessons

Ultimate guitar has a pretty good forum as well

[d000hg]

Music stuff below... if you have no interest a warning so you don't waste your time reading! Sorry there are no implications on house-prices...

Background
As a young child I had lessons to play classical guitar - playing from sheet music basically. I only got to about grade 3 and since then never read music so have basically forgotten all the stuff I learned.
A few years ago I started playing acoustic, but more as a rhythm instrument - steel-strings rather than gut, chords, etc. But with no understanding of music I am basically limited to reading/learning chords to a song and playing. I can transpose keys (just arithmetic) and do a few twiddles but am basically painting by numbers. I play in my church band but whenever they go off into a bit of a jam at the end of a song or while warming up, I just end up standing like a lemon... they tell me what key they're playing in and expect me to just jump in but it's like they're talking a foreign language.

Help!
Can anyone recommend forums online and sites/books which might be helpful? I don't want to be some music theory buff, but know enough to know what I'm doing; at the same time I really have no idea to start as far as picking up what other people are doing and just playing along. It's mainly practical knowledge I'm after but at the same time when someone says "we're in E" I want to understand.

Any links? Of course guitar/music folk can chip in here too