sweep picking discussion

[haunted]

I've never seen someone sweep pick in person, ever, aside from a distance during a live show. For the longest time, I was just so clueless to how it works. Then 3 days ago I thought about sweeping and how I hadn't tried it in 4-5 months or so. To my disbelief I was doing it practically my first try at a decent pace, muting all the notes individually and still being smooth. I'm completely self-taught and picked up a guitar for the first time a year and a half ago... i've never had any instruction by any means except for looking up and creating tabs. Which brings me to the topic I wanted to discuss: I don't think sweep picking really has anything to do with 'complex brain timing' and other stuff I've heard and read. It has to be just simply getting your fingers into shape, as well as a little manifestation..from my experiences with it. I'd like to see some other opinions on this, especially from some other guitar players.

[quadz]

Which brings me to the topic I wanted to discuss: I don't think sweep picking really has anything to do with 'complex brain timing' and other stuff I've heard and read.

I liked Jeff Loomis' advice in this interview about the metronome:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkZXW-DS9XA

"A lot of young guitar players want to play very fast at first, or shred. You really have to work up to your speed, maybe by just using a metronome, working with a very very slow click. [...demonstrates Paul Gilbert exersize...] ...just work slowly with a metronome and build up your speed."


Also, check out 6:50 in the video where he slows down an arpeggiated riff from This Godless Endeavor... It was wonderful to see it slowed down--even though he doesn't sweep pick it when he plays it slow.

I've been working on learning some solos that include sweep picking over the past few months... for me, the really hard part is playing the notes really clean.  But it doesn't seem to me there's anything particular special about sweep picking itself per se.  It just falls under a broad economy-of-motion category.  When I'm learning a new pattern in a fast solo, I like to pay attention to all the string crossings made by the pick.  Like, if i start this pattern with an upstroke then these next several string crossings are really smooth (i.e. the pick doesn't need to reverse direction right before changing strings.)  Theres one particular run in a Malmsteen solo that comes to mind... I first learned it just picking alternate up down up down... after awhile I realized, I could eliminate about 1/3 of the pick strokes by converting the string crossings into "mini" sweeps...... well it's hard to describe in a post, but anyway... essentially I found a way to economize the picking and it made it easier to play fast.

One other thing I noticed pretty quickly with some up-down sweep patterns, is that a well chosen hammer-on at the top or bottom of the pattern can make all the difference in converting it from being a bit awkward, to more of a pure up/down sweep... (Changing one note to a hammer-on instead of picking it can sometimes eliminate what would have been an awkward direction change of the pick and make the sweep smoother.)


Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun with it... but like Mr. Loomis said I've got a long road ahead with the metronome to really slowly bring these patterns up to speed cleanly.


Regards,

quadz

[haunted]

Awesome comments quadz.

I know exactly what you're saying with replacing alternate picking with mini-sweeps, it was one of the first things I tried when I understood the concept of sweeping..it's even easier than doing it with alt. picking now.

But, It would seem I am the complete opposite to you when it comes to sweep picking. I know zero arpeggios. I really don't... lol. Seems kind of absurd, but my entire, very dedicated, time with guitar has been spent towards 1. writing my own songs 2. doing experimental alternate and speed picking and the least of the 3, learning about 20 songs. So in a lot of ways, I am a COMPLETE guitar newb. But, which brings me to why we're opposites when it comes to this, I hit sweeps involving all fingers pretty clean. Unfortunately I'm not even sure what I'm doing in particular to mute all of them correctly being that my first try seemed to do it. I use my palm for raking down and fingers for raking up, on and off to mute them.. if that makes sense. But the downside of this project, although I'm hitting them clean, and occasionally kinda fast, i'm hitting a combination of patterns that resemble pentatonic scales, power chords, and random notes. Totally experimental, and only a few out of the many repetitive patterns I've come up with sound decent.

Basically, I feel that it was my left hand that was lacking, and when I finally got the ability to speed pick and alternate pick pretty clean, so came my left-hand abilities with sweeping, somewhat... because i'm doing the same patterns with each sort of. I'm just lucky I guess that I'm playing it clean, for the *most* part. I'll record a little bit for you when I get off work later and post it. My biggest problem is that I can only be successful with it if my hand is relatively stationary... vertical movement but little to no movement across the fret-board.. probably because I haven't familiarized myself with doing that with easier kinds of picking at a pace like that.

As for Loomis's advice concerning a metronome, I couldn't agree more. I've always used a metronome; the same one I used with the 6 years of piano lessons I took when I was younger. I haven't had time to watch much of the video though, I will later when I'm home.

I have to agree with you that sweeping is a lot of fun. The most fun I've had with guitar period. It was a big reward coming from my POV, being that as I said i'm somewhat of a guitar newb. I have much work to do with it as well.

[quadz]

But, which brings me to why we're opposites when it comes to this, I hit sweeps involving all fingers pretty clean. Unfortunately I'm not even sure what I'm doing in particular to mute all of them correctly being that my first try seemed to do it. I use my palm for raking down and fingers for raking up, on and off to mute them.. if that makes sense.

I use my palm to mute on the right hand, and sometimes i try to use my fingers on the left hand, i.e. release pressure on a fret after the string is picked...

I do have trouble with muting, but it seems to depend on the complexity of the arpeggio.  For instance, the impressive sounding sweep at the very end of Malmsteen's Far Beyond the Sun, turns out to be one of the easier ones in the song for me.  So I can play that pretty clean, but the little three string arpeggios right before that I have a lot of trouble muting properly.

And I suppose it's all relative, because while from my perspective I consider Jeff Loomis playing to be practically inconcievably clean and precise, a youtube comment on that video link above, said, "he still has a ways to go to be as clean as gilbert i can tell...but he still has an amazing skill".


So I guess everyone's playing is not clean relative to someone's.

But the downside of this project, although I'm hitting them clean, and occasionally kinda fast, i'm hitting a combination of patterns that resemble pentatonic scales, power chords, and random notes. Totally experimental, and only a few out of the many repetitive patterns I've come up with sound decent.

These days the 'net is just too damn awesome, in the sense that it seems you can search for pretty much any song and find free guitar tab for it.  (As well as folks on youtube playing the solos.)

I'd recommend just picking some solo that really motivates you, and download the tab and start working through it.  I know what you mean... for example Loomis uses some crazy scale patterns that sound really cool and never would have occurred to me on my own...


Regards,

[ReCycled]

I know zero arpeggios. I really don't... lol. Seems kind of absurd, but my entire, very dedicated, time with guitar has been spent towards .... So in a lot of ways, I am a COMPLETE guitar newb...

Hey haunted...when you're talking about arpeggios, you're really talking about musical theory and how chords, modes, and scales all become musical composition and how it's all related. Satriani has some good videos on this and a ton of other stuff. If you learn some of this it will make your playing and writing easier and better. Otherwise you're just stumbling around on the fretboard trying to find stuff that "sounds good".
Here's one on scale modes (Ionian, Dorian, Mixolydian etc). Note the video may be out of sync. Vinnie Moore has one too that's simple to understand.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTQolymKmDA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCazHyVBA6w&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K-DbaaI4wc&feature=related
 
 

[haunted]

I'm pretty drunk right now so this sucks but this is a sweep picking scale i came up with like the ones i talked about. i kept trying to play it fast but i'm too drunk and couldn't play it clean while fast so...

oh and notice the recording. This is the first time I've recorded something in other than sound recorder and it sounds ridiculously better ha

[quadz]

Here's where I am so far on the godless endeavor solo.... sloppy as hell, needs lotsa work....

http://tastyspleen.net/~quadz/music/quadz/guit_practice_090521_tge_solo.sloppy_sloppy_needs_lotsa_work.mp3





Edit: BTW, I don't want to seem too negative about it... I'm definitely having fun learning it... enjoying the journey, as they say...

[haunted]

Really cool quadz. I'm dying to do it that fast but my hands are a little too desync'd as of now, especially when I'm line-in because you have to hit it even more precise. Link me to the tab you used!

[quadz]

Thanks.

This is the tab I used: http://www.911tabs.com/link/?3950505

The tab is pretty accurate, but I did find a couple mistakes. (Particularly at the end of the solo... Watching the loomis interview video above, though, you can see how he really plays it.)


Regards,

quadz

[quadz]

Heyyy... Just stumbled upon this youtube link, apparently ripped from an instructional DVD, where Loomis shows the diminished sweeps preceding the TGE solo, slowed down, from a couple camera angles:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz_mGogIAVI

[|iR|Focalor]

I'm not really sure if this some kind of sweep picking technique combined with tapping or just tapping. It's a little hard to tell, I think he's multi-tracking along with some different frequency delays on both sides with hefty decay times to give it a thicker sound. Nevertheless, one of the most interesting little solo pieces I've ever heard from Trey Azagthoth of Morbid Angel. Ever since their 3rd album, "Covenant" (my favorite), he's displayed an uncanny knack for being able to add harmony and melody in very unexpected and interesting ways to his music. Sounds that sometimes teeter totter on the edge of pure cacophany. He's never really relied as heavily on massive amounts of gain and distortion to make his guitar sound so lean and mean, he mainly uses his precise picking timing (at breakneck speed) on rhythm passages with a less fuzzy distortion to attain a sound somewhat comparable to a pissed off swarm of hornets. A lot of people might think of him as just another headbanger beating on a guitar, but his style is quite different from the majority of other players, both then and now. A lot of rock guitarists have tried to incorporate classical and baroque styles into their songs,... only to simply use those classical and baroque scales in their solos without giving much thought as to how they could beef up the sound of the verse riffs with a secondary guitar track that might flip-flop between elements of harmony AND melody using the same scales OR completely different scales which might sound compatible at least in portions.

Morbid Angel (Trey Azagthoth) - Hymn to a Gas Giant

[haunted]

Cool quadz, thanks.


Focalor-At first it sounded like he was picking all of them but come to think of it, it kinda sounds like tapping with something like reverb and chorus delay cranked up to make it seem like he's not tapping them... maybe? Idk, your guess is better than mine.

I'm no good at the whole sweep tapping thing. I'm fast enough to do it well but i can't hit the notes individually or clean....

[|iR|Focalor]

I'd have to assume it's all tapping with no picking involved, but you can't really tell because of the amount of delay used.

Joe Satriani did something a little similar on Surfing With The Alien with his song "Midnight". I know for a fact that THAT was all tapping, I saw the video he put out after that album where it shows him playing it in the studio. "Midnight" sounds a little more simple though. I have the tab book for that album, and it's basically nothing but using the index and middle finger of both hands to tap the notes. Sounds more like Trey was using 3 or possibly 4 fingers per hand to tap all that. Plus... a lot of the time, he uses his old Ibanez Universe 7 string. I've just always thought that sounded really cool, almost like a harp.