As others have said, between an acoustic and an electric the big differences are:
Smaller neck on the electric with closer-spaced strings.
Sound is different; acoustics tend to be warmer, but it does depend on the guitar and the strings.
Electrics generally have solid bodies with no soundbox, so will be very quiet when playing without an amplifier (good for practising without upsetting the neighbours!)
Electrics can be played with distortion and effects. Learn power chords and a few barre chords and you’ll be able to make a lot of awesome noise with little effort)
Some electrics will have a tremolo (whammy) bar, which lets you bend the pitch while playing. If you have a cheap one these can tend to give more noise across the strings, and can be harder to keep in tune.
But yeah, aside from that, functionally they’re the same; have the same scale and the same tuning, with the same number of strings. In terms of playing, I like a lot of 90s rock and indie, so for me it’s a lot of Oasis, Radiohead, REM, Feeder, Nirvana, etc etc. The Beatles are good for starters, although some songs are harder than others. Something like Hey Jude you can play with four chords and you’ll learn how to transition between them pretty easily. That said, avoid the ‘four chord songbook’ series of books. They have loads of different songs you can play using the same four chords, but they’re all very basic versions of the songs and don’t tend to sound so great. Bands like Nirvana, ZZ Top, Black Sabbath, Lenny Kravitz, etc, are really good for learning power chords, and are really easy once you have the hand position. Just crank up the volume and the gain, flick on the overdrive and rock out. A song like Stairway to Heaven will be good for learning picking techniques and barre chords, although that is a little advanced if you’re just starting out. Everybody Hurts by REM has a nice picking pattern and is just a few basic chord positions, so easy to learn and it’ll sound good on just about any guitar. If you want a song you can learn super quick, check out Wonderwall, although you’ll want to get yourself a capo for it to sound right. It’s really easy to play and has a satisfying strumming pattern which you can play around with. Something like When the Man Comes Around by Jonny Cash is good for learning palm muting techniques.
One thing you’ll learn is that some of the most awesome riffs are actually really easy to play. Look at stuff like Smoke on the Water, La Grange, Money for Nothing, all of which have absolutely cracking guitar riffs but you can learn them really quickly. When I was first learning these songs I did find it a bit surprising how easy they were compared to other songs which sound simpler but are far harder thanks to lots of chord variations.
If you’ve got yourself an electric guitar, and you have either an xbox or playstation, you could also check out the game Rocksmith. You plug your guitar in and it’ll have you playing along with songs as they’re playing, and it’s a good way of learning how to find the right fret quickly and get comfortable with the neck. It also means you’re playing with accompaniment which gives a better sense of you being part of the song. It is a little bit buggy, but it’s good fun once you get used to the interface.
Anyway, have fun, and as mentioned, Ultimate Guitar is a good place to get tabs and chords. They also do smartphone and tablet apps, and if you pay for the advanced version you’ll be able to see protabs, which you can play along to.
