Tablature helped a lot when I first picked up a guitar. I never took lessons, and I couldn't read music to save my life, but I play entirely by ear. Also, a good starter music programming software is fruity loops or FLstudio I think it's called now. It's very user friendly and versatile as well. It is MIDI compatable, so if you have a MIDI keyboard, drumpad, controller etc. It's great for that. It also has several VST plugins, softsynths, drum machine emulators....but you can also use samples and anything that is a .wav or .mp3. so you can record your own instruments if you got a good mic.its It's got a built in sequencer for programming beats, melodies, basslines and whatnot (you can adjust it to fit any time signature) the newer versions have a tracking option for large outside .wavs and .mp3s so you can add in vocal tracks, guitar...whatever...which is actually cool because you could just use this option to record tracks with all your MIDI instruments track them on there and just utilize the effects and VST plugins. I didn't have the luxury of that when I got into using the program in its earlier incarnations. I had to use a different program for tracking stuff like that. There was actually a program called fruity tracks back in the day and I used that to layer guitars and vocals over the programmed stuff from FL.
I used to always get ripped on by my musical elitist friends for using fruityloops, but I've dabbled with protools, reason, a few other programs but FL was always my favorite. If you know how to EQ, utilize the effects, and do the mastering end of it right, you can get it to sound as good as any other program out there.
you gotta start somewhere....and this is a great program for that.