Sweep picking problems

G

Guitarfreak585

New member
Guys, I've been playing for coming up on 13 years, and I want to learn to sweep. I'm an average guitar player I suppose, maybe slightly better than average. But I cannot get this sweeping thing down past the most baaasic of patterns, and even then, only on the down stroke.

Is it just this hard to learn? Is there some damn trick I'm missing? I've been trying to learn the intro to My Will Be Done by Unearth, ad its simple enough. I watched the video and tabbed it out exactly the way he plays it, and I understand the shapes and patterns, but I cannot do this crap. I've been at it for 3 days now.
 
Hey GF.
I don't know what sweeping is but I do know that if a technique is like pulling teeth but I really want to learn it I just keep repeating what I can do of it until it gets in my brain then add more of what I can and add more and add more till I get it.
Sometimes it can take more time than I can give it in one or two sittings so I get up take a deep breath and start again another day.
The fact that this is frustrating you, means you really want to learn it and you'll persevere
till you get it.
The greats had their walls too and they worked through those walls and thats what made them great.
s:)

keep us posted.
 
I've spent 6 months working out fingerstyle ragtime pieces.

One day it all just clicks into place.
 
3 days is nothing. Anything of significance you try to add to your repertroire is gonna take longer than that.
 
I takes a long, long, long time, to learn to sweep, nobody I know just picked it up easily. My advice would be to take the distortion off, play through a clean channel, and then sit with a metronome and start around 60bpm and work your way up. Making sure your rolling your hand and fingers properly to make sure that each note is sounding and then muted properly as well. Using distortion for learning techniques = bad. It can cover up subtle problems and it's much more difficult to perfect something because if you mess up you can hear it a lot better.

When I learned how to do it took me close to a month, every day to play an Avenged Sevenfold song until I nailed it. And even then, the song was down, the technique wasn't, you could give me another piece and it and it wouldn't go ever well. Not trying to discourage you, but to play unearth up to speed and accurately, it's going to take a while.
 
Learning to play tremolo and picado on flamenco guitar took a couple months for me to master. I would imagine it would take around that long to master sweep picking. Play everything slow and gradually build your speed. Have patience.
 
CrowsofFritz said:
Learning to play tremolo and picado on flamenco guitar took a couple months for me to master. I would imagine it would take around that long to master sweep picking. Play everything slow and gradually build your speed. Have patience.
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master? ........
 
My band's guitarist picked it up in about a year of practicing 6 hours a day every day :wtf: . Definitely not as easy thing to do. Keep at it though!
 
I just took this on myself after 16 years of playing guitar.

I'm finding that going at it with a metronome and increasing the bpm ONLY after it sounds clean and you played it perfect a few times.

Don't just slop around at it though, learn it right and learn how to do it cleanly.

And no, I'm not that great at it yet. I just started tackling it this year. lol
 
Lt. Bob said:
I'm just saying master isn't the right word. You don't master anything in a few months and it could be accurately said that you don't master anything to do with music in less than years.
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Yeah your right. That wasn't the best word. I'm definately not the fastest picado player in the world. But I found that I was very happy with the speed of my picado within 3 to 4 months of practice at it.
 
CrowsofFritz said:
Yeah your right. That wasn't the best word. I'm definately not the fastest picado player in the world. But I found that I was very happy with the speed of my picado within 3 to 4 months of practice at it.
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yeah ..... I imagine so. That's a pretty good stretch of practicing. And I wasn't saying anything other than 'master' might be going a bit far.
But for sure ....... most things can be picked up in a few weeks or months well enough to be able to confidently do them and do them well.
 
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