How To Become A Great Neoclassical Guitarist - FREE 14 Day Neoclassical Guitar Lessons Mini Course - Part 3
Listen to “Labyrinth of Madness”
Sweep picking basics lesson
Welcome back! Today we will revisit the instrumental song that we started working with in lesson 1. You will learn a new section of it that will help to improve your sweep picking technique.
Click here to listen to "Labyrinth of Madness". Please do this now before continuing to read further.
We will focus on the section 1:37-1:42. You can see the tab here:
To listen to the slow version of this lick, click here. Although this section is short, it is actually challenging to play accurately because it combines sweep picking with a scale sequence. This ability to combine sweep picking with other techniques (such as scale sequences) is a very important skill to have, because in real music you will rarely be playing only one technique at a time. So this exercise will greatly help you with several aspects of your guitar playing.
If you are not familiar with sweep picking, check out this sweep picking basics lesson by my friend Tom Hess before going further.
Now I want to give you several of my own strategies for practicing sweep picking in general and this lick specifically.
1. The most important element of sweep picking is the ability to play each note accurately. When you are playing any arpeggio, you should be hearing only one note at a time. (Otherwise your playing will sound very sloppy.) Playing sweep picking slowly (and accurately) sounds much better than if you tried to rush through the arpeggios sloppily.
2. To achieve point 1 above, practice slowly and listen carefully to your playing. Stop yourself at random points in the arpeggio and listen carefully to see if the note you stopped on is the ONLY note sounding at that moment (it should be). If you hear more than one note ringing together, then you must slow down and refine your playing more until it becomes clean.
3. To build speed with sweep picking, focus first on the motions of your picking hand. The pick must move in one continuous motion across the strings without ever stopping or coming away from the guitar. This will help to play smooth and fast. Many guitarists make the mistake of only focusing on the fretting hand and completely neglecting the picking hand’s motions. Don’t make this mistake!
4. Pay careful attention to the picking and fingering markings shown in the tab. You need to combine hammer ons and pull offs with picked notes in order to play cleanly and accurately.
5. In order to get the pattern of the arpeggio sequence into your ears, it will be helpful to you to break up the 2 measures of this lick into 4 parts (each one 2 beats or half of a measure long). To see an illustration of this, see the tab below.
By practicing very small portions of 2 beats each, you will be able to learn the notes much faster and with less effort.
Between now and the next lesson of the mini course, I want you to practice the lick from this lesson while applying the sweep picking tips given above to the rest of your arpeggio playing. Don’t worry about trying to play this lick at full speed over the next 2 days. Your goal should be to learn to play it smooth and clean at a slow to moderate speed for now.
We will revisit the topic of sweep picking later in this mini course.
In the next lesson I will teach you the most common ways of using scales in neoclassical music and will show you how to practice them to make your guitar playing much more creative!
Applying the sweep picking tips (such as the ones in this free mini course) to your playing will put you on the fast track to improving your sweep picking technique. However, there are many more things you must know and practice in order to be able to easily (and creatively!) use the sweep picking technique in music. In my Neoclassical Revelation Guitar Course I teach my students dozens of different arpeggios shapes, patterns and sequences that are used in this style of music, as well as specific ways to overcome the common sweep picking problems that guitarists struggle with (there are MANY!) We also work on specifically applying this technique to real neoclassical guitar solos and combining it with other guitar techniques. Come to my website and you and I can get started today.
Go here to review Lesson 1 of this mini course.
Go here to review Lesson 2.