Learn How To Sweep Pick Fast And Clean Using Perfect Rolling Technique

Want to sweep pick fast and clean arpeggios that make your playing sound badass and 100% pro? One of the most important techniques you need to master is fretting hand rolling technique. Good news is, it's much easier to do than you think. After you master it, playing clean sweep picking arpeggios becomes effortless.

Watch the below to learn how to sweep pick faster and cleaner than ever before:

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Here are a few more tips to help you master your sweep picking:

Sweep Picking Tip #1. Master Your Picking Hand Motion For Sweep Picking

Your picking hand will make or break your sweep picking chops. The #1 mistake of sweep picking is:

Making individual motions with the picking hand instead of pushing the hand through the strings in one motion (when ascending…

…and pulling the hand back when descending.

Here is an analogy I give my guitar students to help them understand the picking hand mechanics of sweep picking:

Imagine you have a baseball bat in your hands. But instead of hitting one baseball thrown at you…

… you have to hit 5 balls all coming in your direction in a straight line.

What’s the best way to hit all 5 balls? Answer:

Make one continuous swing of the bat.

In this analogy, your guitar pick is the bat. The 5 balls are the 5 strings of an arpeggio.

The motion of your guitar pick (your bat) must be every bit as smooth and continuous.

Get it right and sweep picking becomes the single easiest technique to play on guitar.

Sweep Picking Tip #2. Keep The Rhythm Of The Notes Consistent

A common problem guitar players have with sweep picking is: distorted rhythm.

This usually happens when playing arpeggios with hammer ons and pull offs.

The mistake is: rushing the notes of hammer ons and pull offs, so they sound faster than the other notes.

Why is this a problem? 2 reasons:

1. It makes the rhythm of the arpeggio sound uneven and sloppy.

2. It makes the arpeggio all but impossible to ever play fast. (That’s because you would be playing notes of the arpeggio at different speeds.)

What is the solution?

Practice arpeggios to a metronome at a slow tempo in quarter notes.

This means: play 1 note per click. This will force you to get the notes last the same duration (including hammer ons and pull offs in the arpeggio.)

Note: don’t practice in quarter notes all the time. Only use this approach for improving this specific nuance of arpeggio playing.

Sweep Picking Tip #3. Mute Sloppy String Noise In Your Arpeggio playing.

Let’s get real: nobody likes the sound of sloppy sweep picking.

So, how can you ensure your arpeggio playing is free of string noise?

Use 3 proven muting techniques, which are:

1. Thumb muting. Rest your picking hand’s thumb on the lower (in pitch) strings and slide the thumb up and down the strings as you sweep pick.

2. Fretting hand index finger muting. This means: use the underside of your index finger (on the fretting hand) to touch the higher in pitch strings while you sweep pick.

3. Picking hand fingers that aren’t used to hold the pick. Rest one or more of the fingers (usually, it’s the ring and/or pinkie) on the higher in pitch strings to keep them from ringing.

With this triple layer of muting, your playing becomes free of string noise.

You now know how to make your sweep picking cleaner and faster. The next step is to learn how to transform the rest of your guitar playing (your other guitar techniques, music theory, ear training, phrasing, fretboard visualization and more).

When you do, you’ll be able to finally “put it all together”, stop playing the same things over and over and become a real musician!

I can help you with this in my Breakthrough Guitar Lessons.

Here is how it works:

You will fill out the evaluation form to tell me about yourself as a guitar player.

I ask you a ton of questions about your musical skills, knowledge, strengths, weaknesses, frustrations, background and guitar playing goals.

After you are done, I will go through your evaluation from in detail (I usually read it at least twice). Then I will create a lesson strategy to get your playing from where it is today to where you want it to be.

It’s all based on everything you told me about yourself in your evaluation form.

Next: I create your actual lesson materials.

These are the exercises, drills, concepts and techniques and that break down your goals into bite-sized steps that improve your playing.

As you follow these steps – you become a better guitar player. Same way you follow the navigation system in your car.

Just follow the directions, make all the right turns and you will get where you want to go. It’s almost literally that simple.

As you practice – you won’t be alone.

Here is how I help you in between your lessons:

I train you live on video every week in live training classes. There I take the hardest guitar playing topics and break them down to make them easy to master. Plus, I get to see you play and answer your questions live on video.
We also do live guitar practice sessions for you, me and my other students. We all practice guitar together and work on things each of us may struggle to practice individually.

This helps you to get stuff done and improve more quickly.
I'm here for you when you need me. Here is what this means:

If you have questions – email me anytime - day or night. I answer your questions in detail and you always get a reply from me directly.

Plus, you can talk to me every week live on video in Office Hours (where I answer your questions live on video).
You can send me recordings of your playing for feedback. In my feedback, I help you diagnose and remove bad habits from your playing and erase all obstacles slowing down your progress.
You can join our exclusive community on my students’ forum. There you can get support from my top guitar students – many of whom are now professional guitar teachers themselves.

I’ve coached them on how to teach guitar in the Elite Guitar Teachers Inner Circle.

All you have to do is practice what I tell you to do at least 30 minutes per day 5 times per week.

If you can practice more – that’s great. But if you practice the lessons I give you just 30 minutes per day, it becomes almost impossible for you not to improve.

Check out the results my guitar students are achieving:

“When I met Tom Hess, I knew that this is the guy. Just going through the evaluation form, all the questions, different questions, and he was digging deeper and deeper into all my goals and all that stuff... and no one has ever done that with me before, so I felt right away that this is the guy.”

The level that I was at before I went to Tom for lessons was that I could play pretty fast, I could play sloppy, I didn’t know nothing about music theory, so I was kind of unbalanced, I was uneven. I was a good player technically, but I knew very little about music theory. So I wanted to even that out, and Tom has helped me, not only evening that out, but also exceeding my expectations. So now I’m playing at a level that I didn’t expect that I could play at. So that’s... I’m very happy with that.

I like lessons with Tom because of the format basically. He gives a variety of formats... not just one format, like video for example, but also pdf files and audio files that you can take with you if you’re doing something else... you have to do labor that day, laundry or whatever... then you can listen to the sessions and while... you can actually benefit when you’re not even practicing, so it’s a no brainer.

Gottfrid Norberg Waxin, Sweden

“When I first heard about Tom Hess, I saw that he was a teacher that was very dedicated and serious about it, and that drew me in immediately. That this is a guy that has a plan, has a goal and really if you’re serious about learning guitar, this guy is equally as serious in a way. So it resonated with me straight away.”

I started out just learning by myself and as many others I got stuck. I had a few issues I wanted to get by, but when I met Tom and talked with him and started lessons with him, he opened up a whole new world of possibilities of what guitar playing can be.

I feel very grateful that I found lessons from Tom since I then did what worked from the very beginning. Many guitarists I see that played way longer than I did, they have build up many bad habits. That from the very start, there was clear instruction of how to practice correctly. You build the ability for high speed and whatever you want from the very beginning and you don’t waste time doing inefficient things. So I’m very grateful that I did that, and now I really feel I am able to reach whatever level I want.

The reasons why I think I feel so motivated all the time is because I know that the thing I’m working on is relevant for me and it’s exactly the direct thing I need to get.

The forum just kicks ass. The people in the forum - it’s just like unconditional help all the time. They love to help out, and you also get very inspired by seeing someone just really getting speed really quick and then you say if he can do it, I can do it. It works on the mental side of being a guitarist and that of course that’s the most important thing. Just being around other musicians like that, is just you learn so much faster, is so much less frustration when you can see that all the people are having the same issues that you do, not anything special or anything. It’s just part of learning process, so it kicks ass.

Magnus Gautestad, Norway

“Before I started taking correspondence lessons I was basically stagnant in my playing. I had kind of reached what I thought was a pinnacle and I started looking for what’s next, what’s bigger and better… and I just happened across Tom’s lessons and since then I’ve realized that this plateau that I was feeling was way down here and now he’s helped me tremendously. I know I can do things on the guitar that I could’ve never dreamed of five years ago.”

I chose to take guitar lessons with Tom over anybody else because a) Tom is a professional musician, and I want to learn from people who are making a living as a musician and b) he just had a wealth of knowledge that he freely gives to you to kind of say here, you know here is the golden nugget.

The biggest change in my playing that has happened since I started taking lessons with Tom is playing like a true musician, phrasing like a true musician, and kind of separating myself away from all the wannabes.

So if I were to compare Tom’s correspondence lessons with just taking private lesson in a local market, it’s night and day. For one thing, Tom’s lessons are easy to understand, they’re very in depth and they’re tailored to what you want to learn… versus private lessons, a lot of times the teachers are using their students as guinea pigs to figure out how to teach… and Tom’s not doing that, he’s knows what he’s doing.

Thoughts when I started with Tom were “Is this going to work for me?” because it was definitely not the norm. And my thoughts now are “Hell yes it’s going to work”, because you see results.

Tom’s goal-oriented approach has helped me, I guess break horizons and get results that I could’ve never gotten before. Only because he helped me flesh out how I want to play and how to get there. He gave the goals and the path to get there, and it’s been excellent. Tom is like he says, an ordinary guy, but he’s doing extraordinary things, and I know in my life that’s what I want to do. I just want to be an ordinary guy that is impacting lives, and that’s been huge from Tom.

Ty Morgan, Phoenix, Arizona

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