Whew, Donny I was afraid you'd posted a link to my playing!
Tommy, you’re doing great for 6 weeks, I’m glad you’re having fun and hopeful, there’s every reason to be! I’ve only been playing 2 years, but from my perspective, here are a few things I've found helpful in my (so far) short journey:
- Keep up the lessons from pros like Mike Sweeney
- Muting and string rattling will improve almost "magically" (with practice, ha!). Really, though, one day I suddenly realized how much progress I’d made in that area…
- Don’t worry too much about licks or tab at this point (I still don’t really focus on those things). More importantly you want to continue to learn your fretboard, where chords and scale tones are found in various positions (for instance, play the major scale at open, AF, and AB positions, and I even count aloud the scale tones as I play them sometimes). I found it might have been a bit slower for me than jumping into tab and licks, but I’ve got a much better foundation doing it the “long way”!
- Begin to learn harmonized scales, especially two-note scales on strings 3&5 with AB (from open and AB down positions), 4&6 with BC, and 5&8 with A pedal and E-lower / E raise levers….note that once you learn 3&5, you also know 5&6….4&6, 3&4….5&8, 4&5, etc!! I have found the harmonized scales are HUGE for me in both melody playing AND backup/fills.
I too have a 6-string playing singer-songwriter friend who has lots of patience with me jamming with him. I got a Zoom H2 recorder and recorded my friend on several songs, now I can practice “with him” without torturing him!
