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16: Sweep Picking Explained in 5 Minutes · The Guitarjet Podcast

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the guitar Jet Podcast, where you'll skyrocket your
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  Speaker 1: knowledge of theory, techniques and fundamentals for guitar. Hey, I'm
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  Speaker 1: your host, Miles, and welcome to the guitar Jet Podcast.
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  Speaker 1: Today I'm going to be explaining sweet picking and you
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  Speaker 1: can find the notes for this episode in the link
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  Speaker 1: in the description or on guitarjet dot com. Now let's
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  Speaker 1: dive right into it. So what is sweet picking. Well,
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  Speaker 1: it's a guitar technique where you play single notes consecutively
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  Speaker 1: across two or more adjacent strings using a single picking motion.
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  Speaker 1: This is similar to strumming, and this lets you play
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  Speaker 1: our peggios quickly and easily. Learning how to sweep is
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  Speaker 1: also the first step towards learning economy picking. Sweet picking
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  Speaker 1: uses a single continuous motion either downward us and or upward,
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  Speaker 1: which we call descending, and that's how you actually sweep
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  Speaker 1: across the multiple strings. And when you're descending, you may
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  Speaker 1: need to pick upwards then pull off to restart, or
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  Speaker 1: just start the upward sweet picking motion. And as you're
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  Speaker 1: doing this, the fretting hand needs to stay in sync
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  Speaker 1: with the picking hand, playing one note at a time as.
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  Speaker 2: You move across each string. This results in your arpeggio
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  Speaker 2: rather than a chord because the notes are not played
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  Speaker 2: in harmony. So remember when you have a chord, all
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  Speaker 2: the notes are played in harmony. When you have an arpeggio,
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  Speaker 2: it's a chord played one note at a time, so
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  Speaker 2: a chord played out of harmony. And here's a simple
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  Speaker 2: sweet picking pattern, and you can find a lick associated
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  Speaker 2: with this pattern in the link in the description, and
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  Speaker 2: the pattern has six picking motions. It's down down, down, up,
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  Speaker 2: pull off up. So when you do the three down strokes,
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  Speaker 2: you want it to act as a single motion down down, down,
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  Speaker 2: and one single motion. And then once you hit the
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  Speaker 2: high eastring, you'll pick an upstroke, then pull off and
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  Speaker 2: then move back up. And what's important here is that
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  Speaker 2: you restart the motion. So you want to memorize. You
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  Speaker 2: want to drill it into your head to go down down, down, up,
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  Speaker 2: pull off up, down down, down up, pull off up.
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  Speaker 2: And now let's talk a bit about how guitarists use
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  Speaker 2: sweet picking. They basically just use it to create fast, clean,
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  Speaker 2: or peggiated lines for solos and melodies. It's a common
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  Speaker 2: technique in shred guitar and all styles of hard rock
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  Speaker 2: and metal, especially neo classical metal and three classic examples
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  Speaker 2: of sweet picking are our Peggios from Hell by Ve Molmstein,
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  Speaker 2: Serrana by Jason Becker, and Eugene's trick Bag by Steve I,
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  Speaker 2: which is from the movie Crossroads. Some common sweet picking
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  Speaker 2: mistakes that you need to avoid include inconsistent pick attack
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  Speaker 2: such as picking two aggressively, number two, letting notes bring
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  Speaker 2: together in harmony rather than one note at a time,
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  Speaker 2: three rushing your sweeps on the way down, then getting
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  Speaker 2: off rhythm on the way up, and four playing your
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  Speaker 2: notes out of sync resulting in a very sloppy red sound.
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  Speaker 2: So just start slow and remember that sweet picking is
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  Speaker 2: a foundational picking technique and it's really perfect for playing
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  Speaker 2: our peggios on the guitar. And like I said, you
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  Speaker 2: got to practice slowly, focus on keeping your notes clean,
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  Speaker 2: and work on a variety of sweet picking exercises. I
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  Speaker 2: also have another podcast episode I recorded about sweet picking tips,
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  Speaker 2: and that episode includes some exercises which are also linked
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  Speaker 2: to in the description below. So hopefully you got something
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  Speaker 2: out of this episode and hopefully you understand sweet picking better.
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  Speaker 2: Now go and listen to some of those tunes some
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  Speaker 2: of those sweet picking examples, and go ahead and practice
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  Speaker 2: the exercises that I've linked to, and thanks so much
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  Speaker 2: for listening, Have a fantastic day.