How To Sweep Pick - Getting Started
By Tom Hess
Sweep Picking is one of the most important techniques in lead guitar playing. Arpeggios are an important part of virtually all musical styles and sweep picking is a critically important picking technique to play them. Sweep picking should be a part of your daily guitar practice routine.
“Sweep Picking” is a name for a technique used for playing arpeggios (note of a chord played separately) on the guitar.
There are many possible types of arpeggios that can be played with sweep picking. Fortunately, after you learn the basics of this technique, you will know how to practice any arpeggio that you can create on the guitar.
In this sweep picking lesson, you will learn the most important things about practicing sweep picking so that you can get you started correctly with learning this technique.
I will illustrate the basics of sweep picking with an example of a very common arpeggio:
Hear it
This is one of the most popular arpeggio shapes. I will now give you several very important tips about various aspects of sweep picking that will help you with learning to play arpeggios like the one above.
The Picking Hand Motions For Sweep Picking:
When you play the arpeggio above, you need to pick each note in a distinct way in order for the notes to be heard separately. In other words, you are not performing a “strum” with the pick, but instead play each note individually. This is very important for playing sweep picking cleanly.
Watch the videos below to see this done correctly:
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When you are ascending any arpeggio (playing it from the lowest note to the highest), you do so with several downstrokes played in a row (as shown in the example above), and when you are descending any arpeggio (playing it from the highest note to the lowest), you do so with several upstrokes played in a row.
The Fretting Hand Motions For Sweep Picking:
When you sweep pick arpeggios (such as the one shown above), you must make sure that only one note is sounding at a time. This will enable you to play cleanly. In other words, after you play the 1st note of the arpeggio, your finger should release (and mute) it as the next finger is moving to the 2nd note. As you play the 2nd note of the arpeggio, the 1st note should no longer be heard (and only the 2nd note should be ringing out). This is the process your fretting hand should follow when playing. Watch the videos below to see the fretting hand motions for sweep picking played correctly:
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The Rolling Technique:
Some arpeggios will require you to play more than one note on the same fret of different strings, all with the same finger. This is referred to as “Rolling”. Here is an example of this using another very common arpeggio.
Hear it
And here is the same arpeggio, with the “rolling” portion circled in red. Notice that the two notes on the 2nd string and the 1st string are both played on the 13th fret with the first finger.
Watch the videos below to see the rolling motion performed correctly:
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The rolling element of sweep picking is quite challenging to master in the beginning, and I will give you some tips below for how to speed up your progress with this skill.
- Do not think of rolling as “barring” (as in playing barre chords). As I wrote above, you must have only one note sounding at a time when sweep picking and NOT allow the notes to ring together (as you would when playing barre chords). This is very important!
- Practice with distortion to hear if you are playing sloppy or not. Many guitar players mistakenly think that they need to practice sweep picking with a clean tone all the time. This is not true. Practicing with distortion gives you more accurate feedback on how clear your sweep picking really sounds. Practice sweep picking about 80% of your guitar practice time with a distorted tone and 20% with a clean tone.
- Don’t tense up your hand, arm or shoulder while doing the roll. Keeping them as relaxed as possible will greatly help with speeding up your playing.
As you work on your sweep picking, apply the practice tips above into your practicing. Over time you will start to notice this technique becoming easier and easier.
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