wiggedy

This is worth looking at

The Correct Mechanics of Sweep Picking



from about 3:15 to 6:30 he talks about fretting lighter at a comfortable speed rather than trying to speed up

Junior#1

Um no. Jazz III's are a favorite of many guitarists, myself included, but that has nothing to do with sweeping. It's whatever pick you're comfortable with that will make the difference.

TS, as Zaphod and Geldin already said, there are more important things to learn that sweeping.

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sea`

Don't. You should NOT take shortcuts in your technique, ever. I learned that the hard way through years of focusing too much on jamming and playing random crap, rushing things up to tempo before I was ready for them, and not enough focus on how to play cleanly and properly. Once you reach a situation where your technique doesn't work or is sloppy and you can't play something as a result, then you are ****ed because you won't just need to learn something new, but un-learn years of bad habits.

Using little tricks like that in recording situations where you have to be as perfect as possible, once you have already learned how to perform the technique correctly, is fine. Don't do it while you're learning, or developing, or practicing. You'll save some producer a headache when they have to start recording your songs bar-by-bar and mashing 100 takes together just to get you to sound good, when it comes time to record your album.

Personally I have been practicing sweep picking on and off for years, however, over the last month or so I have been practicing about 2 hours of it a day, sometimes more. Since then I have got to the point where the sweeping motion feels natural and my coordination is pretty good, up to playing 16th notes at about 160 bpm. I can't sweep crazy-fast, not yet, but give me a few months and I might be there.

Sweeping is one of those techniques where if you don't have an absolutely flawless and analytical practice routine, and don't spend hours and hours on the absolute basics (pick angle, coordination, finger muting technique), you will learn it wrong. Protip: sloppy sweep picking sounds crappy, and a lot of the people I know who say they can do it actually suck at it precisely because they rushed themselves (and require huge amounts of gain etc. to cover up errors). I'm pretty determined to not make those same mistakes.


I watched that video a while back and it really did wonders for my technique. Highly recommended you practice that (the "sit down and watch TV while sweeping for hours and hours so you don't go insane" tip is also a good one).

wiggedy

Good to see, I have been working on getting a lighter touch rather than trying to go faster.

He also says (it may have been in another video) be sure to maintain your picking hand when speeding up. In other words if you pick from the wrist when playing slowly, make sure you are doing the same thing when you speed up. Just another simple thing which has also helped me heaps.

sea`

Yep, that was a nightmare to get down and the single biggest obstacle. After many, many weeks of practice however, it should start to feel natural. I have even started to incorporate sweep/economy-style picking into my regular playing solely by proxy.

wiggedy

Good to see it all working for you, very encouraging!

Dreamdancer11

Hey guys thx for checking out my youtube video .From my experience with correct practise it takes about a year to be fairly decent at sweeping.Be sure though you have the mechanics of the motion down perfectly orelse you are getting better at perfecting...mistakes.

Want proof? make a person that is halpf assing his sweeps to do it painfully slow.he CANT do it(even if he is sort of doing it faster).Why? cause he never sat down to analyze every detail of the motion and just strums with the right hand hoping the left somehow ll follow and be synced in time.It rarely happens this way.Watch my video again and again and be sure you are following to the letter.Then its just a matter of time....