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[slink]

A recorder is fun to play.  It doesn't require any maintenance except pulling a soft cloth through the body to remove saliva.  You can get plastic ones for very little money compared to other instruments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorder_%28musical_instrument%29

The ultimate in cheap is a kazoo, by the way.  You basically hum through them so you don't even know how to read sheet music if you can carry a tune.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazoo

[Inarius]

Play every day if you can, even 5 minutes.
Don't hesitate to talk with other people who plays the same (or an other) instrument. They will give you advices, and musicians in general love to player together when/if they can.
Try to make it fun when you play alone, so if you can, divide your time of study in 2.
First you work the basis, learn music (it's very important, tabs are fine for guitar, but you will be quite limited one day or another), work your scales, repeat slowly what you are working, several time. And after that, play for fun. This will help you keep motivation on a long term and will help you to play better, too.

[Putnam]

But now go ask someone who plays guitar how many chords they don't know and can't play after a year.

I was really green guitarist when some of my friends insisted I join the school jazz band as the guitarist (which I had never thought of but wanted to do instantly). A year in that--five days a week--taught me every chord; that is not an exaggeration, nor do I consider it bragging. The thing about chords is that they're systematic as hell; every chord is either atomic (major/minor/diminished/augmented), extensions of other chords (anything with an odd number more than 5) or slight modifications (7b5, 13#11 etc.).

The trick is that you also basically need to learn music theory in general for this.

[Inarius]

Learning the chord and tabs is -for playing music - like learning songs in foreign language. You can know them perfectly with the right accent (think of opera singers) and this is the best short/middle-term investment, but this won't help you for building anything with it. After a certain amount of time, you can't learn everything by heart, you have to learn the basis. And the sooner the better.