How To Play Cleaner Sweep Picking Arpeggios In No Time Using A Frequently Overlooked Practice Approach
by Tom Hess
Cleaning up sweep picking arpeggios is not as hard as you might think. You simply need to practice in a way that quickly identifies the causes of your sloppy playing.
Many guitarists mistakenly do this by playing a pattern over and over and hoping it fixes itself... this approach is very ineffective and inefficient. A better way to quickly clean up sweep picking arpeggios is to isolate the fretting hand and picking hand to see where your playing breaks down.
Isolating The Picking Hand
Mute the strings with your fretting hand and pick the arpeggio pattern as you would if you were playing normally. While doing this, focus on hearing the notes in your head and watch your picking hand. Look for any times when you break your picking momentum or use big loopy motions (and make them smaller)
Repeat the arpeggio in this manner for 1 minute.
After isolating each hand, combine them together and practice like normal. This makes the arpeggio feel easier than before because you have pinpointed problems in each hand and corrected them without the distraction of paying attention to the other hand.
Use this isolation approach to break large arpeggios into smaller sections and perfect them a few notes at a time.
This approach helps you not just for sweep picking, but for all other techniques as well.
Watch this video to see an example:
Isolating The Fretting Hand
Use a clean setting on your amp and play the arpeggio you want to master using only your fretting hand to hammer down on the strings. Focus on making your finger movement as efficient as possible by eliminating unnecessary motion.
Look for parts of the arpeggio pattern where you struggle to stay in time. Repeat the arpeggio in this manner for 1 minute.
Apply both methods for the next week and watch your arpeggio playing become cleaner and faster than ever before!
This is just one of many ways to become a sweep picking master. Learn other powerful ways to clean up your arpeggios by reading this sweep picking article.
About Tom Hess: Tom Hess is a guitar teacher, music career mentor and guitar teacher trainer. He teaches rock guitar lessons online to students from all over the world and conducts instructional live guitar training events attended by musicians from over 50 countries.
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