Ultimate Sweep Picking Lesson - Josh Middleton

you so you asked about sweet picking more than anything else I figured I'd do quite in-depth video about the subject I'll start with some examples of the more kind of common arpeggio shapes and then I'll talk a bit more about kind of technique and exercises and way to improve it so sweet picking is essentially just like a fluid raking motion off strumming motion across all of the strings usually combined with some kind of arpeggio that the left hands doing and it's a really good way of doing really wide intervallic leaps and covering a lot of ground in a very short space of time it's quite a handy tool to have in your arsenal even if you don't use it all the time or in a very conventional way it's just a very kind of technique and redoes bootable of controlling both the ions and it's really good for just coordination in general I personally struggle with it for ages and then just one day clicked and I could just do it so on just that's going to be persistent and bear with it so I'll start off by showing you a really basic a minor arpeggio you really nice see on the twelfth fret a string but because it's kind of unusual grouping notes I add in a fifth below the a which is an e note adding in this night just really help to the flow of doing these arpeggios especially if you want to come and loop that over and over again if you think of it kind of like sextuplets or triplets you've got one two three four five six one two three even though that's not the room I mean I said this really helps gonna stabilize and make it sound a bit bad so I'll play that with the tub I'll do that again slow mmm so one of the other more common shapes are gonna show you here's a major shape this one's gonna be a b-flat major one mm-hmm and same again I'm gonna add a fifth below the night so that's gonna be an app that sounds like this hmm your weights remember this shape is like playing a C chord but bar so if you kind of play like this mm-hmm again this just really helps when you want to sync up with a metronome and you don't have like six top list like I said so that with the tab so there are a few ways you can pick these up edge owes a lot of people do a downstroke by the way I picked this which is slightly different to a lot of people that's doing alternate picking on the a string this kind of helps just give it a bit more of a percussive sound and I've bit more control over the kind of flow that I do leave the high E string is I hammer on and pull so on doing is down up down down down down I'm on colosso down so when it comes to exercises for sweet picking I've seen a few of the kind of chromatic kind of things and for me I just think the best thing to do is practice the arpeggios that I just went over to a metronome and you know just doing the five mocha string ones are just the best thing to get you really used to doing sweet picking and get you in design so as I've mentioned in a previous video the best way to practice sweet picking to really develop your technique is doing it really slowly and probably way slower than you even think you might need to be doing it so again like seven this other B are kind of compared it to you know tied to your yoga very slow but controlled movements the reason for this is sweet picking is about doing a really fluid rake or strumming motion not plucking the strings like this it's really hard to maintain that really fluid movement and timing adjust right so you're sneaking over the left hand you're syncing up with every know that you wanna be hanging but you're not plucking you just keeping a consistent movement happening and getting that time to write and having the control to do that is actually a lot ask do a slow speed and when you're trying to do it fast because you're not really relying on gravity to do the work or just really easy movements the slower is the more control you build up in you know all the tendons in your wrist and the muscles in your hand and that kind of stuff so practicing it slowly really does help build up the control but when you do want to start to increase the BPM you'll be way more controlled and clean because you'll be way more aware of kind of unwanted string noises when you're practicing really slow and you really be able to pay attention to every little aspect of the arpeggio and getting that control on your right hand is the only way to do it by doing it slowly like I said doing it like this being really controlled is way harder than just moving a consistent motion like that another thing I mentioned in this previous video was the benefits of practicing with both a clean sound and a distorted sound especially for sweet picking so if you practice with a clean sound you can really hear the consistency in your picking the coordination between hands and you know how clean your playing is overall we're practicing with a destoyed sound you can hear unwanted string noise scrapes scuffs all kinds of unwanted noise that you don't always hear when you just playing on clean or unplugged so both have their benefits and it's kind of worth switching between the solo guitarist need to sweet picking or I put a lot of guitar teachers recommend this to people than you sweet picking is if you take this arpeggio shape and just play the high notes on the high three strings and this is a good thing to practice but I recommend just doing across all five strings more than that just cuz it really gets you used to the sweeping motion and you get more of a chance to really get used to doing it across more strings is good to practice both but if you're just going to hone in on one I just recommend doing the full up I do show you another useful shade that's just on the high three strings is this diminished rate the cool thing about this shape and diminished scales and any other kind of symmetrical scale is you can just move this one up every three frets and it'll still sound good it's just the exact same shape just because that's the way the scale is so those are kind of the basics of sweet picking there's no real kind of cheap or easy way around there the best thing to do is take one of those basic arpeggio shapes practice it really slowly with a metronome paying attention it's being really clean and consistent with your picking and just don't worry about speed because once you do get used to doing that you've just done it for quite a long time and put the hours in to just being controlled then when you do starts try and get faster it'll be a lot easier to do um you know than just going strain at the deep end

Channel: Josh Middleton

Views: 985,274

Keywords: josh middleton, sylosis, josh, sweep picking, sweep, sweeps, sweeping, metal guitar, metal, guitar, shred, shredding, rock, solo, picking, alternate, technique, lesson, tutorial, electric, thrash, shreds, esp, eclipse, prog, progressive, clean, cleaner, tight, marshall, jcm, heavy, fast, speed, faster, exercise, exercises, improve, improving, ability, equipment, gear, live, beginner, advanced, tab, empyreal, edge of the earth, dormant heart, monolith, how to, ultimate, rhythm, tapping, arpeggio, arpeggios, best

Id: m8p-gc_4Hms

Length: 7min 48sec (468 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 20 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/Durgroth]

This guy is slowing becoming one of my favorite guitar players. This is one of the simplest sweeping lessons I've ever seen mostly because of his down-to-earth, straightforward attitude.

[u/[deleted]]

I never liked sweeps in my own playing, but this was inspiring. Awesome share, thanks a bunch.