Don, what about just melodies, if she's having trouble with chords?

I'm becoming increasingly annoyed by my mistakes when trying to play by ear and improvising and am now tackling this problem seriously. I've also been having increasing pain in my left thumb, so I've been trying to play without using barre chords for awhile to see if the pain goes away. It seems like a good time to practice single-line melodies and bass patterns.

PoppaGator, I agree with what you've written. In addition, I always had problems trying to learn to improvise. After many years of struggling, I feel like I'm getting there. I had the information, scales, books on soloing, transcriptions of solos, etc., but I couldn't make the leap to playing an improvised solo. I never wanted to memorize riffs or learn other people's solos by heart, although I know this approach works for others. I'm now glad I didn't and have tried to learn to do this my own way, even though it's taken a long time.