I hate to digress now that we've gotten into such an interesting subtopic, but I haven't yet commented on a couple of things that were mentioned much earlier and that reminded me of observations I might contribute:.

In his very first post, Old Folkie said:

I also have heard of a technique where the melody is picked out on the bass strings, with the higher strings being effectively just fill notes.

I think what we're talking about here is sometimes referred to as "Carter Family style," as in Wildwood Flower. Years ago, when I was figuring out how I wanted to play Tom Paxton's Bottle of Wine, I had come with a nice key-of-C fingerpicking approach to the chorus, playing the melody on the treble strings, but couldn't continue in the same vein through the verse. I tried all kinda things, including sliding the "D" shape way up the neck to play the "F" chord, but was left with no bass notes, etc. I wound up playing the (approximate) melody on the bass strings (pretty much the same notes as for the standard C/F/G walking bass) for the verses and playing the melody on the treble strings for the chorus. Worked for me; still does!

Also from that opening post:

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to master barre chords, so I seem to be stuck in the first position chords, and don't seem to make any real use of the rest of the guitar neck!.

I shied away from barre chords for years myself, and still use them sparingly. What I did learn to do instead, at least for the common major chords formed like the "F," was to use my thumb to fret that bass string.

For a few years, I had to skip or dampen the 5th (low A) strings, but eventually got to where I could hold down all 6 strings with all 5 fingers. Even now, when I can make the barre chord, I prefer the use the "thumb-wraparound" method for F major and F minor and all the variations up the neck, while using the teacher-approved barre chords for the BbMaj/BbMmin shaped chords and also for F7/Fmin7 etc.. At least on songs with lots of these chords, I think it leaves me with less finger-fatigue and palm-cramp than trying to use the barre-chord method exclusively.

ALSO: you can play up the neck a bit without having to use barre chords or even full-six-string-fretted chords played with the thumb and/or partial barres rather than the standard index-finger-all-the-way-across barre. There are some very nice alternate chord forms that combine open strings with strings fretted relatively high on the fingerboard that create nice unusual sounds. Several are mentioned somewhere in those other threads from the recent past that I referenced; I can remember just a few:

~ Slide the C7 chord up five frets for a nice, full E7 with high and low E strings open and ringing.

~ Slide the C, C7, or C-plus-high-G-note-by-the-pinky up two frets for D or D7. The open G string is not truly part of a D chord, but it sounds OK as a "drone" when in the key of G (not unlike the high-drone G of a 5-string banjo).

~ A couple of tricks from Robert Johnson's Kind Hearted Woman, a blues in the key of A: Slide a D7 shape way up the neck (7 frets, if I'm not mistaken) for an A7, a Dmajor shape up two frets for an E, and move a Dmajor shape two frets up and one string lower for a nifty open A major:

E--0--
B--5--
G--6--
D--5--
A--0--
E--0--

Nifty, huh?