GUEST COLUMNIST:

ANDREW PHILLIPS

How To Sweep As Tight As A Ducks @rse!


Hello shredders!

As we all know, sweeping is a popular way of expressing arpeggios quickly, and hopefully keeping it clean as well! My advice to people about this technique is that yes it has its place within guitar playing, but I would suggest players don't overuse this and go into long arpeggio sequence type choruses because its silly and we've all been there! ;-)

The video is brief in this lesson, as most of sweeping simply comes from practice... But I wanted to explain here not just how to sweep... but how to get it tight and clean!

Video Step 1:
First off, I highly suggest you MASTER the arpeggio using alternate picking before you even attempt to sweep it.. by mastering I mean being able to play it over and over without mistake, your fingers must know the arpeg inside and out! It's perfectly ok to be picking over the fretboard at this point, as you will need your hand there to add taps and so on, do what feels comfortable.

Step 2:
Again before sweeping make sure you've mastered the arpeggio with added tap/slide/anything you fancy, I must stress that a metronome will really help you at this point! When it comes to actually sweeping it, if you've truly mastered the arpeggio then your first attempt shouldn't sound entirely awful! You have to remember to relax your hands completely and allow the pick to move like a hot knife through butter, you have to feel EVERY note of the arpeggio being separated by your fingers. It's important that you practise on the clean channel to begin with; to ensure that high gain expensive distortions with reverb and other toppings aren't covering up mistakes!

Keep the tone as raw as you can to begin with, count the notes in the arpeggio and hear each one separated from the rest... If it sounds good DO NOT start tearing away at full speed and allowing your hands to slack. There are too many sweepers around who just produce a frenzy of noises and notes, and in my opinion this is pointless unless the listener can name the arpeggios being played! If you can accurately sweep slowly, and get the hang of it over various different arpeggios, then you can start to speed it up a bit.. and hopefully find yourself tighter than most!

Good luck!

-Andy


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