When you learn to play the guitar properly and find out the basic parts, such as the neck, tuning heads, bridge and strings, you'll normally be given a few simple guitar chords as a test. A majority of the attention is on the your chord playing hand (normally the left) and the attention to the strumming is much less evident in guitar courses.
This could lead you to think that the strumming side of modern guitar play is fairly inconsequential but it is just as important to work on getting this right from day one. It's a real shocker to me when someone is playing their guitar and they play all six strings for more or less every chord, making no attempt to mute any wrong notes. Even if the chord hand is doing perfect work, this can all be undone by the strumming. Some hints to make your guitar work more polished would include changing the way you play certain chords.
As an example, when playing C, there is generally no need to play the 6th string or E string and there are 3 methods you can use to achieve this.
For C chord, mute the 6th string with the thumb of your chord hand by bringing it over the top of the neck to lightly rest on it
Change from 0-1-0-2-3-x to 0-1-0-2-3-3 using your 3rd finger on the 6th string and your little finger on the 5th
Strum more accurately, being sure to start from the 5th string in this example
There are many other chords where these unwanted noises creep in, but as a rule of thumb, the root note of the chord is the 'name' of the chord. In this case, C is best played by muting with the thumb, so that the first not e of the chord is C. When playing 'A', the first note of the chord should be 'A'.
You can learn to play the guitar properly using online lessons but you just need to become your own critic in order to stamp this kind of thing out. This attention to detail will make all the difference.
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