How To Combine Sweep Picking And Legato Guitar Techniques
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In this shred guitar article...
I show you awesome ideas for combining sweep picking and legato into pro-sounding guitar licks.
These ideas not only make your next solo sound better...
They also make it easier to create your own guitar licks that integrate all other guitar techniques you know.
(Going beyond sweep picking and legato).
Plus, along the way...
I’ll give you many guitar technique tips that will make your guitar speed and accuracy improve greatly as well.
So, no matter your musical tastes and style
(Or even your skill level...)
You'll get a lot out of the ideas in this article and learn how to have more fun playing guitar.
EMAIL TO GET ACCESS
By submitting your info, you agree to send it to Tom Hess Music Corporation who will process and use it according to their privacy policy.
To begin...
Watch the video below to learn cool sweep picking and legato shred guitar licks and see how to practice them to improve your guitar technique fast:
Now that you know the basics of combining sweep picking and legato, let’s go deeper.
Here are 5 more advanced guitar technique tips that help you play better guitar licks and have more fun playing shred guitar solos like a pro:
Shred Guitar Technique Tip #1: Refine Your Sweep Picking And Legato Motions
As obvious as it sounds, the first step to integrating sweep picking and legato guitar techniques is to get a good grasp on each guitar technique separately. (This makes it easy to play the guitar licks I showed you in the video above.)
Here are some tips for doing that:
Sweep Picking:
Make sure your picking hand moves in a single motion through the strings (when ascending sweep picking licks) and pull the hand back in a single motion when descending your sweep picking licks.
Do not allow the pick to stop or move outside the string trench (space between strings). Doing so breaks the momentum you need to do sweep picking fast and makes this guitar technique much harder than it needs to be.
Watch this video to see how to do sweep picking the right way:
Legato:
One of the little-known keys to mastering legato guitar technique is your fretting hand thumb position. Your thumb affects the ease with which you can do hammer ons, pull offs and the distance your fingers can reach on the fretboard.
For example: if you have your thumb wrapped around the fretboard, it slants the knuckle line of your fretting hand fingers – limiting your reach.
But if you keep the thumb vertical (pointing at the ceiling), your fingers can now move more freely when playing legato licks. This helps tremendously when playing shred guitar licks that integrate both sweep picking and legato guitar techniques.
Watch this video that shows the right way to position your thumb when playing advanced shred guitar licks (that integrate sweep picking and legato):
Question: “But Tom Hess, what if I have small hands? Isn’t that likely to influence how far I can spread my fingers when playing shred guitar licks using legato and sweep picking?”
Answer: If I had a dollar for every guitar student who thought their hands were too small to play guitar, I’d be able to teach guitar for free.
But you know what?
In all my years of teaching guitar, I’ve never once had a student whose hands were ‘actually’ too small to play guitar. I’ve only had students who were using wrong (inefficient) guitar technique when playing shred guitar licks.
Make the thumb position adjustments In the video above and you’ll surprise yourself by how easy it becomes to play guitar licks you once considered unplayable.
Bonus tip: when doing pull offs – snap the finger down (towards the floor) vs. lifting it up away from the fretboard). This makes your legato guitar technique sound a lot better.
Shred Guitar Technique Tip #2: Control Unwanted String Noise
“I love the sound of sloppy guitar playing”, said no one ever.
That’s because it sounds far better to play shred guitar licks slowly and cleanly vs. fast and sloppy.
And how do you ensure your shred guitar licks are free of string noise?
Answer: get clear on the sources of string noise and then use the right guitar technique for making it go away.
There are 3 common causes of string noise when playing shred guitar:
1. Noise from the lower (thicker) strings
2. Noise from the higher (thinner) strings
3. Noise from any pair of strings ringing together (bleeding).
When playing guitar licks that combine legato and sweep picking, the main sources of noise to worry about are 1 and 2.
To mute noise from the lower strings, use the guitar technique called ‘thumb muting’.
As its name implies, it’s done by resting your picking hand’s thumb on the thicker strings and sliding the thumb up and down as you ascend and descend your guitar licks.
As you do, it becomes easy to play legato, sweep picking (and all other guitar techniques) cleanly and fast.
Your hand should look like this when thumb muting:
Question: “Tom Hess, what about muting string noise with the palm of the picking hand? Is that a good alternative for muting with the thumb?”
Answer: You can do whatever you want, but I wouldn’t recommend it (especially when it comes to playing shred guitar licks that combine legato and sweep picking). Thumb muting is much more immediate and secure than palm muting.
Besides, resting your thumb on the strings ensures that your pick is at rest in the space of the strings (making your guitar technique more efficient and helping you play shred guitar licks at higher speeds).
Bonus tip: hold your pick like this to make thumb muting easier:
And as for muting noise from the higher (in pitch) strings?
Use a combination of your index finger of the fretting hand and the fingers that aren’t holding the pick to lightly rest on those strings – keeping them quiet.
Shred Guitar Technique Tip #3: Minimize Excess Muscle Tension
Excess muscle tension is a killer of your guitar technique (and it makes playing shred guitar licks virtually impossible).
The good news?
Relaxing excess tension is quite simple. Here are some of my go-to tension reduction techniques I use with my guitar students.
Tension Reduction Audit.
Like a financial audit, a tension reduction audit is designed to spot the sources of excess tension in your guitar technique and relax it.
What you do is check the various parts of your body where tension is likely to exist (your jaw, shoulders, upper arms, stomach, thighs, calves and feet) and relax them one at a time.
To do this, you need to slow down to a speed where you have enough control over your guitar technique to make that happen.
Here is a video demonstration of how to do a tension audit and refine your guitar technique
Question: “Tom Hess what about tension in the fingers themselves? Shouldn’t I check for tension in the fingers as well as the other parts of my body?”
Answer: Once you relax the tension in your shoulders, stomach, thighs and feet, your finger tension will almost certainly melt away as well (and playing sweep picking and legato guitar licks will feel a whole lot easier). That’s because finger tension is often a byproduct of tension in those biggest muscle groups (which are also easier to relax). That’s why I suggest focusing on them first.
A few more tips about controlling excess tension in your guitar technique that’ll help your shred guitar playing:
Exhale before you play any fast guitar lick. Yes, simply breathe out. This releases tension from your entire body and helps you avoid tightening up in anticipation of a fast guitar lick, the way many guitarists do.
Exaggerate any tension you feel. Yes, as counterintuitive as it sounds, sometimes increasing the tension in any body part where you feel it (by tensing it more) can help you relax. How?
The moment you relax that exaggerated level of tension, you’re likely to relax your body to a much greater state of relaxation than you would be in if you simply ‘tried to let go of the tension’.
Shred Guitar Technique Tip #4: Build Fretting Hand Endurance
Part of the challenge of connecting sweep picking and legato guitar techniques comes from (lack of) fretting hand endurance.
This makes it much harder to play long legato guitar licks (especially ones that also include sweep picking) cleanly and fast.
And here are some of the best ways to develop fretting hand endurance that will help you combine sweep picking and legato in your guitar licks:
1. Play through fatigue by shifting the effort to the picking hand.
When your fretting hand gets tired from all the legato playing, play the legato run you are trying to build endurance with by picking through the notes. Like this:
Note: never play through pain! There is a difference between ‘muscle fatigue’ (a slow burn – similar to the feeling you get when you do a set of push ups) and sharp stabbing pain. Avoid the latter at all costs.
2. Practice increasing your top speed with the lick using speed bursts.
Pushing your top-end speed makes all other (slower) speeds feel easier and thus – helps your endurance. To be clear, you still need endurance-specific practice (see below)...
But the more top-end shred guitar speed you are starting with, the easier it becomes to develop hand endurance. Here is how to improve your guitar technique and build guitar speed using speed bursts:
3. Build endurance by setting ‘playthrough duration’ goals at slower tempos.
Set the metronome to 70% of your goal tempo with your guitar lick (the one you are trying to build endurance with) and set a timer for 2 minutes. Challenge yourself to play through the lick (repeating it over and over for 2 full minutes) without stopping.
This is quite a bit harder to do than it sounds (because 2 minutes is a LONG time). And if you struggle to play through the lick for 2 minutes at 70%, slow down to a lower % of your top speed.
But from striving towards this goal, you’ll find that playing the lick at 100% for a tiny fraction of 2 minutes feels a lot easier.
Shred Guitar Technique Tip #5: Practice Smoothly Connecting Different Techniques (Beyond Sweep Picking And Legato).
Working on smoothly connecting different guitar techniques together builds musical fluency (which is the key skill to playing like a pro).
And here are 2 simple and proven ways to build fluency with your guitar techniques as you practice your shred guitar playing.
1. Isolate the transition point between technique A and technique B. Meaning: play the last 3-4 notes of technique A and the first 3-4 notes of technique B as a standalone exercise. This gets you to focus on the biggest challenge in your guitar lick and master it quickly.
As you get comfortable with the isolated chunk, make it longer by a few notes at a time.
2. Insert a pause between technique A and technique B, playing them like this:
Technique A... pause for 4 metronome clicks... Technique B.
Repeat this pattern until it becomes easy. When it does, reduce the pause to 3 clicks. Repeat the pattern until ‘it’ becomes easy and continue reducing the pause until you are switching from technique A to technique B with no break in between.
Now that you know how to combine sweep picking and legato, I want to help you create awesome arpeggio guitar licks that further improve your sweep picking and make all your guitar solos sound more pro. I show you how in my free eGuide Endless Killer Arpeggio Guitar Licks. Download it today and discover the guitar technique and lead guitar playing secrets most guitarists will never know.
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