Paying detailed attention to exactly how my picking hand was moving, at what time the pick was making contact with the string and whether or not my fretting hand fingers were holding the notes at just the right time allowed me to improve the synchronicity of having this all working together. If my fretting hand movements and picking hand movements were cogs of a clock, they were not lining up with each other. No surprises there but what I noticed was that when I would rake with my pick using a down stroke, ascending across the strings past the thinner E string, to then have to turn my pick around to an upstroke and descend towards the thicker strings, was causing me to slip up and I would pick dead notes or miss the string altogether.

When I first started sweep picking, my technique was sloppy. This attention to detail is needed because as your speed increases the amount of time is shortened between each physical movement making it more challenging to hear, feel and correct mistakes. This is obvious but as you are trying to increase speed with any technique on guitar it becomes increasingly apparent that accuracy and synchronicity between both hands has to be managed. Having your picking hand and your fretting hand working simultaneously at precisely the right time is essential when playing music so that you avoid unwanted string noise or mistakes. Improves two hand synchronization so that you can play anything with less mistakes and less string noise Practicing sweep picking had helped me get huge breakthroughs in my playing, which I will share with you now.ģ Benefits From Practicing Sweep Picking That Help Other Areas Of Your Playingġ. I practiced diligently and what I found blew my mind. I stumbled into sweep picking when I was working with a guitar teacher to sharpen my creative skills and physical technique to play and write songs that I thought sounded awesome.Īt first I thought, “Really? I don’t want to do this, I already know this isn’t for me”, but I trusted my guitar teacher who had already helped me achieve my goals in many other areas of my guitar playing and he had assured me that this was part of his strategy and that it was going to drastically help my playing and my songwriting. The sound of sweeping is unique and if you have not done so already you should listen to several examples from many genres to get an idea of what it is and how it can be used. This is not the same as playing arpeggios with up and down strokes one after the other (alternative picking) and is neither the same as picking each note individually with a single direction in a stop start motion.

If you are new to the term “sweep picking”, what I am referring to a picking technique on guitar where you rake your guitar pick across several strings in a single motion (no stopping between strings), in a way that you can hear each individual note rather than a strum. I have since realized that I missed out big time on practicing a technique that could have shaved off months of improvement in other areas of my playing. Sweep picking just had not entered the arena for my playing needs for many years.

I focused instead on other areas of my playing such as developing my rhythm, string bends, vibrato and the speed of my directional picking which were all badass techniques which helped create the sounds I was looking for. It is because of these beliefs that I actively avoided it for a long time, even though I prefer to play rock and metal styles where sweep picking is more commonly used.

Sweep picking songs