Hi MinnesotaGuy, welcome aboard and thanks for the thumbs up.
Those sound like pretty good things to get familiar with ... you'll find eventually that you become one with the strings. Remember, they're only strands of wire. They can be pushed and pulled and muted and twanged and slapped and tapped ... hammered, pulled, pinched, tweaked ... you name it. Whatever it takes to get the sound you're after at that particular moment, figure out how to do it.
I myself have just "discovered" a new finger style rhythm thing, a merging of a bunch of techniques. Even after 43 years of playing, I'm excited about this new way of extracting the music form the strings. There's a little movie of it at
http://planetalk.thatllteachyou.com/...ebeguine.shtml if you're interested. It's a kind of all-in-one style I've developed, melody, bass line and chords, but with bare fingers as opposed to the Chet Atkins thumb pick approach.
So, just keep playing as much as you can. Experiment. Keep adding tricks to your bag, forever and ever, amen.
Kirk
