Sweeping, the 1457th...

[six]

Hey guys, I need some advice... maybe more from the old-skool players who use a sweep here and there than from the speed maniacs - but let's see.

The technical aspect of sweeping is one thing, and although I'm still not able to pull them off blazing fast, this time it's the other aspect: musicality.

The thing is: I can't connect this suckers (sweeped arpeggios) to the rest of my playing (unless I do some lower tempo arpeggios). But most of the time it sounds like "now I'm playing..."-"now there's a sweeped arpeggio that adds NOTHING to the playing"-"now I'm playing on".

Do you get this? ... hopefully.

I mean, how would I get into and out of a sweep? I tried using them as kind of run-up to a certain note... but mostly I end up thinking I might as well have omitted it and played a rake or a slide instead.

Any tips on incorporating them?

In case you wonder why I want to play them if I think they don't fit anyway: I just GOT TO do something about my playing... can't play the f-ing same for years. So I want to polish up my technique a bit... other things too, but that's a different story.

 

[nukeitout]

You'll have to overpractice the bitches from slow to fast until they are accurate. If they're sloppy you'll never incorporate them well. Also, learn a few solos that have them in there so you can get a feeling of how to start and finish one in a solo. When I practice arpeggios I usually just practice up and down major scales playing the appropriate major, minor, or diminished chord through two octaves up and down on the three different forms (e bar chord, a bar chord, d chord shape) for each note in the scale. For a long time I practiced arpeggios every time I picked up a guitar until I had them grilled in my head and fingers enough to implement them at all, much less smoothly...

nuke

Edit: start with one-octave arpeggios for implementation. A good one to start with is an e minor bar chord starting from the highest note to the middle or reverse. It's an easy roll with a single pick motion that will be a good lead into working them into solos.

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

nukeitout has some good advice. And honestly, it really is just pure practice that makes you better at sweep-picking. One thing to remember is that you're probably talking specifically about sweep-arpeggios, and not just sweep-picking. (Essentially, any time you play two or more notes with one "sweeping" motion of the pick, that's sweep-picking.)

As for how to incorporate them into your playing, it all depends on what you want whatever part you're playing to sound like! Don't just play them for the sake of playing them, it's more important that you think of them in terms of the notes and sound vs. the technique. Put another way, the technique is merely a method of producing a certain sound: it's up to you to decide where the sound fits in!

 

[SHEPPARDB.]

Hey guys, I need some advice... maybe more from the old-skool players who use a sweep here and there than from the speed maniacs - but let's see.

The technical aspect of sweeping is one thing, and although I'm still not able to pull them off blazing fast, this time it's the other aspect: musicality.

The thing is: I can't connect this suckers (sweeped arpeggios) to the rest of my playing (unless I do some lower tempo arpeggios). But most of the time it sounds like "now I'm playing..."-"now there's a sweeped arpeggio that adds NOTHING to the playing"-"now I'm playing on".

Do you get this? ... hopefully.

I mean, how would I get into and out of a sweep? I tried using them as kind of run-up to a certain note... but mostly I end up thinking I might as well have omitted it and played a rake or a slide instead.

Any tips on incorporating them?

In case you wonder why I want to play them if I think they don't fit anyway: I just GOT TO do something about my playing... can't play the f-ing same for years. So I want to polish up my technique a bit... other things too, but that's a different story.

I think sweeps sound great when they are well placed and dont outrun the tempo of the tune.Practice the entire solo with a metronome.

 

[six]

thanks so far.
as for the speed - I sometimes really think I have some kind of bone, muscle or nervous disease. I mean, there have been plenty of times where I've practiced "speed" (be it speed picking, legato or sweeping arpeggios) on a regular basis over a month or even more. and whereas I expected that the progress wouldn't be huge there was actually NONE... and it's not like I started playing a couple of months ago...

... there used to be this guy who - no matter how hard he trained - couldn't run the 100m below 20 seconds.

 

[slowmotion]

thanks so far.
as for the speed - I sometimes really think I have some kind of bone, muscle or nervous disease. I mean, there have been plenty of times where I've practiced "speed" (be it speed picking, legato or sweeping arpeggios) on a regular basis over a month or even more. and whereas I expected that the progress wouldn't be huge there was actually NONE... and it's not like I started playing a couple of months ago...

... there used to be this guy who - no matter how hard he trained - couldn't run the 100m below 20 seconds.

Haha I have the same disease. Funny that when you start out you get better exponentionally, yet when you're actually not that bad, and know all your stuff, getting better (and I mean ANY better) takes so much more effort for no significant gain. Sigh. For some reason I figured when you had a fair mastery of your instrument you would be able to learn faster and better and smarter.... nope. Just more work!

 

[six]

For some reason I figured when you had a fair mastery of your instrument you would be able to learn faster and better and smarter.... nope. Just more work!

Yesterday I read somewhere that once you brake a certain barrier, it becomes easier again.

Hmmm... if I have ever broken a barrier it must have been after about 2 years of playing. Back then, I advanced from slow to "60's/70's rock player fast".
And now it only sounds more routined... hey, just found out there is no such word.

I also wonder why some pro players, who basically do nothing else than play guitar for a big part of their everyday lives, don't play / can't play this really fast stuff. I understand that it doesn't really fit into Clapton's regular playing BUT he - as an example - seems to NEVER EVER play anything that goes beyond "60's/70's rock player fast" in ANY situation.

bah, maybe I'd have had to concentrate on these things earlier... at a tender age . Where's my DeLorean again? I've parked it in another thread, I think.

 

[six]

I now plotted out a little 8-bar solo that has a sextuplet-sequence, a 16th- and a sextuplet-sweeping-arpeggio in it. I started at 80bpm (able to play it at 95 a bit broken though) and I will try to speed it up to whatever... we'll see how it turns out.