Friday, March 9, 2012

Sweep Picking

Some form of sweep picking exists in almost every style of guitar playing.  Some great players who employ this technique are Frank Gambale, Jason Becker, and Yngwie Malmsteen.  The idea behind the technique is to keep the pick moving in one direction across the strings.  Typically, arpeggios (chords played one note at a time) are played with this technique but it can also be applied to other ideas.  Usually a hammer on or pull off is used to switch picking direction.  The main thing to remember when attempting to sweep pick is (like everything else) to start slowly.  Make sure each note can be heard cleanly and separately.  A huge part of playing any instrument is muscle memory.  Muscle memory is your body's ability to remember actions, in which your muscles have engaged, in a repetitive manner.  When sweeping across several strings,  you will only be playing a single note on most of them.  The musical examples contain 5 and 6 string sweeps as well as 2 string sweeps.  Keep in mind that you can use this technique on any number of strings above one string.  For the 5 and 6 string sweeps all of the notes in the middle of each example are played by the pick moving in a single direction.  For the 2 string sweeps the pick is alternating down, up, down, up.  Remember also that the hammer ons and pull offs are only picked once.  Feel free to ask me a question here http://www.ethangutzeit.com/Contact.html Thanks for checking out the lesson.  To access the musical examples click the link below.  Have fun!


http://www.ethangutzeit.com/Licks_and_Lessons.html

No comments:

Post a Comment