# This is Why You Suck at Guitar: Sweep Picking edition!



## HumanFuseBen (Jan 12, 2014)

Buckle up kids, its time to turn those sweeps into something decent with the latest installment of This is Why You Suck at Guitar! SUPER in-depth lesson about the entire technique, starting from the pick and continuing on with everything its connected to! This will give you everything you need to sweep yourself off your own feet.
So sit down, grab a guitar, and "sweep" that goofy haircut outta your eyes. Its learnin' time!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tob2N4dze8


----------



## 80H (Jan 13, 2014)

Dig it, nice job.


----------



## CD1221 (Jan 13, 2014)

That is bloody great, cheers.


----------



## Aghasura (Jan 13, 2014)

I appreciate your technical examination, but more importantly, I appreciate your your discussion of my mom. Sub'd


----------



## tripguitar (Jan 13, 2014)

i like the way you explain things! great job!

gonna go start the fire now so i can send you some smoke signals...


----------



## sezna (Jan 14, 2014)

I'm at work so I can't play along, but I watched it all and I look forward to practicing tonight! I love the humor.

"King of Guitar Center" had me laughing.


----------



## stuglue (Jan 14, 2014)

great stuff


----------



## Zeoj67 (Jan 15, 2014)

Thanks ben .. watched the sweep picking video all the way through . Your lesson is worth its weight in Gold ! If people watch the vid and pay attention to the little details and full detail , theres much to absorb . You are def right about nobody actually showing you the details and finger/picking method in sweeping . When I search , most or almost all show you their patterns . It is very tough to find a good start up vid like yours. Thank you Ben , again !

Joe Z


----------



## TeeWX (Jan 15, 2014)

Thank you for calling out the use of hair bands. Subscribed.


----------



## Phantom (Jan 15, 2014)

LMAO! Fantastic


----------



## Zeoj67 (Jan 15, 2014)

Ok I did what he said today .. the hold on loosely and angling of the pic made a huge difference . I also am an elbow sweeper . I rolled back my hair band after practicing the techniques for a lil bit and much less noise even on the bridge p/u . I have a few patterns that I really like and it helped . My 7 string patterns are going to need more and slower practice . I do practice slow also . I roll back the volume of the guitar to take away some of the gain (around halfway) . Glad I said what the heck lets watch the vid .


----------



## HumanFuseBen (Jan 15, 2014)

Thank you all SO much for the views and kind responses! So glad to help. There are millions of shitty sweep video lessons out there, glad i could contribute a good one! Stay tuned for more and scope out the other This is Why You Suck at Guitar lessons, i've got one on tapping, another on power chords, picking, strumming&#8230;. check em out!


----------



## The Reverend (Jan 16, 2014)

"Yngvie Malmsteen uses the wrist, YOUR MOM USES THE WRIST... VERY EFFECTIVELY" *awkward pause w/ eye contact*

F--king gold, man. I didn't think I would be laughing my ass off and learning how to add some finesse to my sweeping technique. You've just won yourself a subscriber, son.


----------



## Edika (Jan 16, 2014)

Very good instructional video. The empty-full concept is what makes the difference when ascending on the arpeggios as well as left hand finger muting. I kind of suck at regular palm muting especially when playing really fast so my left hand compensates. This has helped me with ascending on the arpeggios because there's no progressive palm muting there.


----------



## Maniacal (Jan 16, 2014)

A lot of good points. 

I also think it is worth starting with 2 and 3 string sweeps first before becoming too concerned with 5 string arpeggios.


----------



## Sdrizis89 (Jan 16, 2014)

Really awesome job on this. Going to watch again and fix a few flaws in my playing thanks to you. Keep them coming!


----------



## asher (Jan 16, 2014)

"like Tom Cruise's teeth in the 80s'"



Well done, sir.

ed: also, I think full/empty is a great way to explain it - and I'm having a huge problem with that in general, so props!


----------



## sage (Jan 16, 2014)

So much win, especially for your comments on gain, reverb, and delay masking sucky technique. Too many people neglect learning to play clean. Keep up the good work.


----------



## TeeWX (Jan 16, 2014)

sage said:


> So much win, especially for your comments on gain, reverb, and delay masking sucky technique. Too many people neglect learning to play clean. Keep up the good work.



I'm glad this was never an issue for me. It sounds so much nicer to have just enough gain to get what you need.

As someone else said before; rolling back the volume is a great way to achieve a nice crunch to practice sweeping.


----------



## Preacher (Jan 16, 2014)

cheers for this dude, so many things touched upon the I can identify as correcting my overall terrible technique! you earned yourself a subscriber right here


----------



## Spooky_tom (Jan 18, 2014)

Nice video but have you ever seen Per Nilsson sweep? He is doing the exact thing with his wrist you mention is a no go at about 9.02 in you video. And in my book Per Nilsson can sweep Perhaps you should have said that it doesn´t work for you, but it might work for some. Just my 2 cents.

http://youtu.be/A5K0VaWL0P8?t=35s


----------



## Svava (Jan 18, 2014)

Yes... yes this is why I suck at guitar ><

Thank you for the vid xD- Subscribed!


----------



## Spooky_tom (Jan 22, 2014)

Spooky_tom said:


> Nice video but have you ever seen Per Nilsson sweep? He is doing the exact thing with his wrist you mention is a no go at about 9.02 in you video. And in my book Per Nilsson can sweep Perhaps you should have said that it doesn´t work for you, but it might work for some. Just my 2 cents.
> 
> Per Nilsson - Scar Symmetry: GuitarMessenger.com Masterclass 1 of 2 - YouTube


 
And another example from mr.fastfinger himself.

Super Sweeping - Master the scary technique - Mr. Fastfinger - YouTube


----------



## meteor685 (Jan 22, 2014)

cool stuff!


----------



## Evilized (Jan 23, 2014)

Great video. Laughed my ass off and actually learned something at the same time. Keep up the good work!


----------



## Andless (Jan 23, 2014)

Sharing tech info is always appreciated. I do way too little formal practicing.


----------



## daedae (Jan 23, 2014)

Cool, I'm excited to watch this after work and see what I can get out of it. I'm taking a class that focuses mostly on pick hand technique but every drill basically just runs the Am pentatonic scale at the 5th fret. I'm making progress on the alternate picked drills, but I am absolutely stuck on the sweep drills because I can not get my fret hand to cooperate (and so far the actual class sessions have been focused on the earlier drills; our homework for the next week was to try to get started on the sweep drills).


----------



## daedae (Jan 24, 2014)

The pick hand technique stuff looks useful...two questions if you feel like answering them:

1) Are you doing anything similar to the progressive palm mute when you sweep up?

2) For the fret hand, any suggestions for how to finger consecutive strings on the same fret? I can kind of manage rolling the finger for two notes, but I can't get three or four string groups going. (Maybe that's purely academic and you would rarely sweep four strings at the same fret, but still...)


----------



## HumanFuseBen (Jan 25, 2014)

Spooky_tom said:


> Nice video but have you ever seen Per Nilsson sweep? He is doing the exact thing with his wrist you mention is a no go at about 9.02 in you video. And in my book Per Nilsson can sweep Perhaps you should have said that it doesn´t work for you, but it might work for some. Just my 2 cents.
> 
> Per Nilsson - Scar Symmetry: GuitarMessenger.com Masterclass 1 of 2 - YouTube



Hahaha well he's Per and we aren't, right????
hehehe but seriously, it looks like he has a little outward turn of the wrist for sure. I would just avoid the MAJOR inward wrist/outward wrist motions i mentioned in my video.


----------



## axemanrio (Jan 26, 2014)

Hah, best sweep picking lesson out there!


----------



## HumanFuseBen (Feb 12, 2014)

Cheers, thanks buddy!


----------



## secondsun22 (Feb 21, 2014)

This made me rethink my entire life.


----------



## HumanFuseBen (Feb 25, 2014)

Your entire life&#8230;. or your WHOLE entire life???


----------



## Der JD (Feb 25, 2014)

Thanks for the sweep lesson!

I stumbled upon it about a month ago and have been practicing my sweeping quite a bit since then with significant progress. The "progressive palm-muting" concept really solidified it for me. 

I'm not even sure how much I'll actually incorporate sweeping into my style but the cool thing about practicing it is that it forces you to learn arpeggios. I've always loved the sound of arpeggios but for some reason never really put the effort into really digging in and learning them. They really change my perspective of the fretboard because with arpeggios you're forced to look at the fretboard across all the strings rather than focusing on one string at a time (which I've been guilty of when practicing scales).


----------



## HumanFuseBen (Mar 1, 2014)

good deal dude! Glad it helped.
Honestly, the way i utilize arpeggios is more of a "cheat sheet" for knowing what notes are going to sound great against a chord while soloing. If i'm playing against Amin7, i know that the "money" notes are going to be the ones found inside the arpeggio.


----------



## lelandbowman3 (Mar 4, 2014)

great lesson. sub'd


----------



## HumanFuseBen (Mar 7, 2014)

Well this just made my damn day! (and snagged me a BUNCH of subscribers!)
Your Guitar Playing Sucks And Here's Why | Metal Injection
very very cool of them to do this for me. yay!


----------



## imnotnollynollynolly (Mar 9, 2014)

Oh man, I found this the other day and literally laughed my ass off! The first few minutes are gold. Good tips too.


----------



## HumanFuseBen (Mar 11, 2014)

Oh smack! Metal Sucks picked it up too! Awesome! This is Why You Suck at Sweep Picking | MetalSucks


----------



## asher (Mar 11, 2014)

Congrats man! It's well deserved.

What's up next?


----------



## Rawker999 (Mar 17, 2014)

This was super beneficial. Thanks man


----------



## Abolyshed (Mar 17, 2014)

I have a question that I haven't heard anybody really touch on the subject... 

I've been playing for 9 years now, I can sweep very clean by now and am overall pretty satisfied with my playing but I always like to over examine. I fully understand the muting and holding of the pic techniques (I think I did the muting naturally out of instinct before seeing an instructional vid or thinking about it mentally, just hearing it). 

So my question is concerning the motion of alternating down and up of the pick. If I was to sweep the garden variety Am in the video low to high I would go smooth motion down all 5 strings to the C on the 8th fret, up pick the E on the 12th fret and then pull off (you could pick each note but I think most of us do the pull of) to the C on the 8th fret and then up pick all the way down to end the arpeggio. So it's one thing to sweep that 135 all the way up and down but how about doing it over and over continuously at very fast speeds? I find it's hard to get the spot where it repeats to connect clean, so I've been thinking about it; your going to be up picking the last note (D on the 10th fret) and then probably up picking the beginning note (A on the 12th fret) of the next repeat, however when you first began your sweep of this arpeggio you DOWN picked the first note.... now think about that. Would it make more sense to always down pick the first note? I've tried it and I think it makes a huge difference, less wasted motion and more comfortable. Applies to any kind of sweep picking you can do. 

Any thoughts on this? I think it might be sort of a personal preference thing. It might feel weird at first so you're first impression will be "I don't play as well doing it this way." but I found once I got the muscle memory down holy shit is it ever comfortable.


----------

