# I'm Slow at Sweep Picking...



## Shooter (Nov 23, 2007)

How long did it take you guys to get your sweep picking up to speed? A few weeks? A few months? A few years? Man, I'm having a lot of trouble getting good at sweep picking. I'm practicing two exercises in particular, one from John Petrucci's DVD (The first sweeping one he shows), and one from a Dethklok song (Thunderhorse, fast sweep lick near the beginning). I've been practicing those for almost a month, with a metronome, starting real slow like and then speeding it up, and they're still not very clean. I just don't know if I'm doing something wrong, or if it really just takes FOREVER to get it tight. Thanks in advance for any advice.


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## nitelightboy (Nov 23, 2007)

Practice with a nice clean tone. It'll help you hear when you're playing it cleanly. Then when you can do that, you're ready to add some face melting gain if you wish.

It's taken me a long time. Of course, I've never really focused much on playing lead. I'll practice sweeps a few times a week...ok maybe once a year but you get my point 

Just keep at it. One thing that I've always heard about sweeping is that one day it'll just click. And from then, it'll be much easier to do.


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## The Dark Wolf (Nov 23, 2007)

... up to speed? 


Seriously, it just takes time, and lots of practice. Once you get the trick of coordinating the arpeggio shapes with the dragging motion of the pick, the only thing left is repetition to make it clean, and mute ringing off notes.


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## Shooter (Nov 23, 2007)

I do practice with a clean tone (most of the time, heh heh) and when I say up to speed, I just mean actually playing a lick in the proper tempo, rather than plunking away at quarter notes in 90 BPM.


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## nitelightboy (Nov 23, 2007)

Just step it up nice and slow. Go slightly faster than you're comfortable with. Meaning if you're comfortable doing it at 90 bpm and you can play it cleanly, then step it up to like 95 bpm until you get comfortable. Then 100 bpm, etc. It takes time to get your fingers used to moving that fast (along with everything else that's happening at the same time). Just stick with it and practice the crap out of it.


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## sakeido (Nov 23, 2007)

Your first sweep will take forever, mine took me like four or five months to get up to 100% speed and crispness, and then each subsequent sweep after that takes less and less time to master, so its definitely a downhill thing once you conquer that first one.


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## Durero (Nov 24, 2007)

Took me about 2 years to really feel comfortable with sweeping technique. Now I tend to use it more often than alternate-picking for lead playing.


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## Apophis (Nov 24, 2007)

I practice sweep all the time, first really slow and then up to tempo and I use sweep very often. For me it's the best technique from those "economical" picking ways

I tune all in fourths, so when I start I use whole tone scale and augmented triad which is symmetrical and I use all four fingers fo play using sweep - it was easier way for me, when I started learning sweep. 

Something like that (numbers are fingers)

-1---------------1---1-------
---2-----------2-------2-----
-----3-------3-----------3---
-------4---4---------------4- etc.

of course it's played other way, couse whole tone scale looks little different, but that's only for an example 

After that I practice ninor, major, diminished etc. arps.


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## distressed_romeo (Nov 24, 2007)

If you're like me, you'll struggle with it for months, and then one day something about it will just 'click' with you. One thing that might help you is to try these exercises with alternate picking rather than sweeping, as this'll force you to really get the right and left hands working in sync, which'll make everything much cleaner when you go back to the sweeping method.


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## Bound (Nov 24, 2007)

I know I was haveing A LOT of trouble with my sweeps practice, until oddly enough I was watching spoof videos of Herman Li and decided to watch an actual video of his 'instructional' playing and he actually switches the way he holds the pick. He rolls his index finger in further and puts his thumb out, which puts your wrist and hand almost parallel with the strings, I found this helped me have a more even 'gait' with my up and downstrokes.... I don't know if this is proper or nor, not am I a super sweep shredder, all I know is it helped me out a bit.


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## oompa (Nov 24, 2007)

also, as you are doing it slow, make sure you dont use any excess motion, and just keep doin it. like sakeido said, the first sweep takes months, took me about half a year. after that its just different models of the same thing more or less, so it gets easier and easier.

naturally, since im all self-taught, i started doubting everything in my technique just cus i couldnt sweep in 260bpm  but it just turned out that i needed more practice while making sure that everything was flawless in slow tempo, in fact i think that is what made the biggest difference, really study your sweep at really slow pace and try to make it totally perfect. this way you learn it correct and then work it up to speed.

i believe that playing slow might be considered easier, but this doesnt mean that it takes less effort. instead you should use the same effort in focusing on making every hit, every move etc correct, with the least excess motion, and as economic as possible. slow shouldnt just be slow and easy, it should be perfectly flawless in technique, cus you can afford it when its slow.. sorta. 

try it out, do a simple sweep and really technique-wise over-do it, make the perfect sweep in every way even if its 20bpm. thats almost what you are supposed to do but at 200 bpm, because you need to do it this perfect in order to get it clean at that speed and naturally this is the way you should practice. i never believed in rushing things, learning it while it sounds sloppy.


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## budda (Nov 25, 2007)

hey man, dont sweat it. i still cant sweep, not that i really practise it.


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## Shooter (Nov 25, 2007)

Thanks guys. Your kind words have comforted me. Now to go sit in front of my drum machine for hours on end...


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## 1349sevengal (Nov 25, 2007)

Its just co-ordination. Basically, since you've started playing guitar the left and right side of your brain has been interacting in different ways. Sweep picking basically takes that principle to the next level, combining left hand finger co-ordination and co-ordination between the left and right side of your brain. (fingering and picking hands respectively) 

What you have to do is just start slowly and cleanly. Don't rush because the first moments of new interaction between each side of your brain is critical in developing good technique and muscle memory. Remember, Einstein developed his theory of relativity based on musical intuition!


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## El Caco (Nov 25, 2007)

I'm slow at picking


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## Zepp88 (Nov 25, 2007)

I started with sweep picking by alternate picking the pattern I was trying to play. Gradualy speeding up untill it became a fluid sweeping motion, it was kind of a natural transition. Granted, I'm pretty slow still, but with practice I'm only getting faster


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## 7 Strings of Hate (Nov 25, 2007)

watch some paul gilbert video's on you tube on sweeping too, he is an amazing teacher. he really helped me


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## guitarplayerone (Nov 27, 2007)

first things first- throw that metronome out your window, or at your dog, or put it back into your guitar case.

you are trying to 'race' the metronome, and that isn't how you learn any guitar technique...

I would learn an actual slowed-down rendition of a song. The first song with sweeps I learned was Concerto by Cacophany (and boy, that will give you a LOT of practice)

Anyway, I can't overstress this- slow it all down d o w n d o w n d o w n

you are going to find it very very hard to play on a completely clean tone (esp on the bridge pickup) at 20bpm.

youll find it a ton harder than trying to play sloppily at 120.

so play it really slow, trust me, one day you will naturally find yourself going towards a moderate tempo, and then soon after youll really be ripping it up.

versus you try to race yourself and youll be stuck at 140 forever, and sloppy too

just be brave and put the time in, this is actually one of the easier lead techniques to learn imo


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## jaxadam (Nov 27, 2007)

Shooter said:


> A few years?



A few years. 6 to be exact.


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## Demeyes (Dec 3, 2007)

For me sweep picking took about 2 years before I felt really comfortable with it. At first I was rushing it and I was really sloppy and it sounded bad, then I stopped for a while and I basically started again. I looked at my technique and started playing through some of the shapes really slowly. 3 strings then 5. Once it became comfortable the speed just followed. Now I'm just adding more unconventional shapes and getting the speed up more.


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## Skitzguitarist (Mar 29, 2008)

I was just wondering, in correspondence to this thread, how do you guys mute your struck notes? Do you use your palm or the fingers themselves amongst everything else that happens. Because my sweeps sound horrible because I can't seem to get the propper muting.


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## kung_fu (Mar 29, 2008)

Skitzguitarist said:


> I was just wondering, in correspondence to this thread, how do you guys mute your struck notes? Do you use your palm or the fingers themselves amongst everything else that happens. Because my sweeps sound horrible because I can't seem to get the propper muting.



For the most part, I believe my left (fretting) hand takes care of the majority of the muting. After a note is struck, i let off the pressure so that the note is no longer fretted but is simply deadening the string so it doesn't ring out. 

The palm of my right (picking) hand comes into play when the chord requires my fretting fingers to go elsewhere (like on a "roll" where notes on adjacent strings are on the same frett) and the palm resting on the string ensures that the string remains dead. It is sort of tricky to explain, as the mechanics are slightly different/reversed depending on whether the arpeggio is ascending or descending.


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## Gilbucci (Mar 29, 2008)

guitarplayerone said:


> first things first- throw that metronome out your window, or at your dog, or put it back into your guitar case.
> 
> you are trying to 'race' the metronome, and that isn't how you learn any guitar technique...
> 
> ...


You can learn to do it, yes, but learning to do it WELL is a whole other ball game. There are tons of shitty sweepers, and only a handful of players who actually do it well, and can apply it TASTEFULLY in a musical context. Tasteful isn't playing fast arps for the sake of playing fast arps. Listen to Rob Marcello, or Joe Stump (or Yngwie ) to hear tasteful applications of sweeping. 

Sorry, just wanted to get that in.


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## guitarplayerone (Mar 29, 2008)

I just typed a good 800 words of post, and then my dad's computer decided to sign me out.

So I will now condense around 800 superfluous words into a couple of sentences.

Stay away from Aminor, the finger roll is kind of useless. It's only used for that shape, while swept, and takes years to perfect. To be totally honest, I've never heard anyone use it without *some* sort of note bleed.

I've slowed down the Duncan Hills Coffee Jingle and brandon small is a bit sloppy, as is Alexi Laiho (as I found out when I was learning the sixpounder solo with my friend Cubase SX3) So are a lot of dudes you might consider gods at this point. So... the point is... make sure you pay attention to the way that dudes like Rusty Cooley, Paul Gilbert and Michael Angelo, etc play- as in machines, guys who really really know what they are doing. And those dudes avoid that shape like the plauge, for that specific reason.

Use a dminor shape instead to play the same notes.

Learn how to sweep the chords that harmonize a DMaj scale. Those would be DMaj emin f#min Gmaj Amaj bmin c#diminished, and then go back down. Use the Dmajor, dminor open chord shapes. Modify the dminor shape into a sweepable diminished shape. First use three-note sweeps, then go to five and beyond about 100 practice hours later minimum.

Learn theory. The difference between people who sound like they are trying to piss off their parents, or impress girls (and simply come across as 'shred posers'), and real fucking guitar animals, are those guys who spent a lot of time practicing slow, and learning music theory- amongst other things, but I think that theory will suffice for now, along with mechanical technique.

You know the former- these are the people who ruin Canon Rock, or Concerto, etc with their horrible renditions of it. They look like they just shit their pants with joy as I think that I have just shit my pants with horror listening to their AMinor/Major double-augmented what the fuck is that sweep.

The latter are usually those dudes who don't try to look like rockstars in their youtube videos. there are exceptions. but I digress.

If you learn the above exercise in one key, you can move it around to sound cool in every key. if you know a tiny bit of theory, you will learn some chord progressions sound cooler than others. What I mean by that is try to sweep along with chords to really simple non-shred songs at first if you won't be bothered learning theory. I mean things like 'Time of Your Life'. Yes, the Green Day song everyone hated the most (at least till American Idiot came out). Yes really. At least it will teach you I IV V. And then you will see that the more theory you learn, the more you start to sound a little like Jason Becker, or Malmsteen, or Michael Romeo, Hewman Wii, or whoever your current shred god of choice is.

Sweeping is a little tool that is used in the bigger picture of soloing, which is used in the bigger picture of songwriting. Work on both. I spent about five or six years just learning the mechanics of nailing some of the songs I considered jaw-dropping when I heard them. But that doesn't nessecarily mean that I was automatically a better guitarist than my peers--- who schooled me with jazz and prog chords (add9ftw). Then I expanded my horizons and I can actually begin to say that I am starting to become a rounded guitarist- moreso a rounded songwriter and musician, at least as far as rock and its subgenres go.

but what the hell... shredding is fun.

learn Paganinni's 5th.... go nuts.

listen to lots of classical music. I leave you with this. Yes, that's Steve Vai. And yes, that's also the Karate kid. Watch... and be inducted into the world of shred.


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## Gilbucci (Mar 29, 2008)

guitarplayerone said:


> I just typed a good 800 words of post, and then my dad's computer decided to sign me out.
> 
> So I will now condense around 800 superfluous words into a couple of sentences.
> 
> ...


Funny that you say that, because I was thinking about the way they apply arps, and all those guys hardly ever use the three string barre sweep. 

Even if, It's still something that should be in your bag of tricks, just in case you ever want it.


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## guitarplayerone (Mar 29, 2008)

Gilbucci said:


> Funny that you say that, because I was thinking about the way they apply arps, and all those guys hardly ever use the three string barre sweep.
> 
> Even if, It's still something that should be in your bag of tricks, just in case you ever want it.



I just think that the time spent learning something like that, which nobody without quadruple-jointed fingers will ever get sounding remotely recordable, could be better spent practicing other things.

Those guys almost never use a sweep where the same finger needs to sweep even two strings- I can think of maybe one PG lick that does... and maybe 'Riders' by Rusty Cooley does. Otherwise... those guys stay the fuck away.

Anyway, time to go work out, watch Arnie movies, and study Chemistry. I've been procrastinating for waay too long. Totally off-topic, but I've been carbing up that diet, and I'm currently trying to raise my BMR.


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## Skitzguitarist (Mar 30, 2008)

Doesn't Symphony X use rolling sweeps throughout Shadows and Mirrors on the descending arpeggios and Yngwie Malmsteen use them in Far Beyond The Sun?


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## guitarplayerone (Mar 31, 2008)

Skitzguitarist said:


> Doesn't Symphony X use rolling sweeps throughout Shadows and Mirrors on the descending arpeggios and Yngwie Malmsteen use them in Far Beyond The Sun?



yes. but all of those dudes consider it to be the hardest sweep shape to learn.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but I think learning how to sweep using the easier shapes should be a priority before tackling something like Serrana, etc, because otherwise it will be an uphill battle.

and as far as motivation goes, it just seems to me to make more sense to have someone practice, and then soon(er) be able to have some fun rather than sitting around for a long, long time trying to nail that pesky amin shape before they can do anything with it.


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## MattyCakes (Mar 31, 2008)

dont forget you can string skip arpeggios and use large stretches. play to your advantages. i feel like i have solid picking mechanics so I play to that when I arpeggiate.


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## Skitzguitarist (Mar 31, 2008)

Yea I really like the string skipping arpeggios like on the PG's Intense Rock Dvd's


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## Gilbucci (Mar 31, 2008)

Tapping is also a great way to play arps. Andy James is the best at this type of stuff


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## heavy7-665 (Apr 1, 2008)

I had major issues with sweeping so i stopped. and then i tried again a few months later and it was good.


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## MattyCakes (Apr 2, 2008)

Gilbucci said:


> Tapping is also a great way to play arps. Andy James is the best at this type of stuff



true, i like his playing alot, i like playing things with my left hand only. i dont like moving my picking hand away from the strings, so in most cases I would play them on one string with a stretch even augmented shapes, which are a minor 3rd apart


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## Ancestor (Apr 5, 2008)

You'll get it eventually as long as you don't quit trying. For me, it's more in the left hand than the right. Have to roll the fingers and synch up both hands to get it perfect.


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## Zand3 (Apr 8, 2008)

What I did was just learn the basic technique for an arpeggio, (starting from the A string, hammering on from root to third on the A string) I practiced it for a few hours each day really fighting the frustration any new technique should cause just to focus on it more / summon will to play it more, then to take out frustration i just shredded with techniques i was already good with, and then went back to working on it, after a few days it just became part of my usual practice to mess around with it, and then before i knew it i was sweeping pretty awesomely, it didn't happen in a day, one day i was like oh i can sweep now..damn i've been able to sweep for a while too, didn't even realize, also just in case you might have a problem with distortion control, palm muting is very important in sweeping, a clean sweeping technique usually calls for lots of palm muting, especially in the first few notes, and the last few as well probably


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## 7 Strings of Hate (Apr 8, 2008)

i tell ya what dude, watch some tv and sit there and practice your sweeps.
for a while i used to do that, and before you know it, your paying attention to the tv and suddenly you notice that your brain isnt hampered with what it thinks it can do, and you look down and your hand is moving like you want it to, its a mental thing mostly


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## Gilbucci (Apr 9, 2008)

7 Strings of Hate said:


> i tell ya what dude, watch some tv and sit there and practice your sweeps.
> for a while i used to do that, and before you know it, your paying attention to the tv and suddenly you notice that your brain isnt hampered with what it thinks it can do, and you look down and your hand is moving like you want it to, its a mental thing mostly


I think technique is pretty much %80 mental and %20 physical. Seriously, if you don't picture yourself doing it in your head, you CERTAINLY will not be able to pull it off for real. I don't know if this has happened with anyone else, but I find when I think about playing technical passages, and my favorite players, my playing sounds better and feels almost effortless. Try doing it for yourself..you may be surprised with the results.


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