7: 5 Sweep Picking Tips (Tabs on My Website)

Level up your guitar technique with these 5 sweep picking tips! They're simple tips that will put you on track to sweep pick like a guitar playing pro!

Here are the accompanying sweep picking tabs on my website.

Thank you for listening! Definitely subscribe to the Guitarjet podcast, the guitar podcast where you'll learn guitar techniques, theory, and fundamentals.

You can also subscribe to the Guitarjet YouTube channel for more guitar lessons.

And are you on Facebook? Never miss an update by following the Guitarjet Facebook page and joining the Guitar Techniques Society Facebook Group.

Thanks again!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to the guitar Jet Podcast,where you'll skyrocket your knowledge of theory,
techniques and fundamentals for guitar. Heythereon, Welcome back to the guitar Jet
Podcast. I'm your host Miles,and today I thought I would help you
out with your technique by giving youfive sweet pipking tips. And of course
you know this is my opinion.These are the sweet picking tips that have

(00:22):
really helped me. And this lessonis accompanied by a lesson on my website
guitarjet dot com slash sweep dash pickingdash tips, or you can just go
to guitar dot dot com and typein sweet picking tips in the search bar
and it's accompanied by notation tabs.And I'll have a YouTube video up for
this soon. So let's go aheadand dive into the five tips. So

(00:45):
tip number one is to start withtwo string sweeps. And this just means
that you know, like a lotof guitar players will start with like a
five string sweep, but I thinkit's important to start with a two string
sweep so you can get familiar withsimple motion such as like for example,
if you're going B to E anduse a single downstroke, you're gonna do
a downstroke on B any that's gonnabe one single motion, and then on

(01:08):
that high E you're just gonna doa simple upstroke, So you go down,
down, up and play a simplearpeggio like a G major R peggio,
which you can find in the tablatureall right. And tip number two
is to practice sweeping in a singledirection. So for example, you could
take a major or minor a peggioand I like to do this on the

(01:30):
GB and Highe strings, and youjust sweep in a single direction so you
can get down that single motion direction. This is very similar to a strumming
motion, so you go down,down, down that it's all one motion.
And just remember that these notes allneed to be played individually, which
means these notes will not ring togetherin harmony. And tip number three is

(01:56):
to learn three string sweeps in whatI call the right way, which is
playing down, down, down,up, pull off on. So if
you're on the GB and high Estrings, you go down down, down
on GB and high E and uppull off on the east ring and up
on the B and that way.After you've done that last upstroke, after
you've done all six motions, yourpick is positioned again on that G string

(02:19):
to go down, so down down, down up, pull off up.
And what's really cool is you cansay those motions to yourself even when you
don't have your guitar with you.Just remember the six motions down down,
down, up, pull off up, And kind of related sweet picking tip
here, it's like a bonus tip, is to watch your picking hand,

(02:43):
because when you're sweeping, you know, sweet picking technique is a picking technique,
so make sure you're looking at yourpicking hand and not just watching your
fret hand. So tip number fouris to play tryad arpeggios across octaves.
So if you don't know, atryad is a three note chord, and
when you break down a chord,you get in arpeggio. So a three

(03:07):
note chord played across octaves is farmore effective than playing a cage darpeggio or
a single position arpeggio because oftentimes thosesingle position are peggios are large and complicated
and have a lot of barring involved. So what I recommend instead is just
playing sweeps within a single octave,which take advantage of simple two strings.

(03:30):
Sweet picking shapes and motions that Ikind of refer to in tip one,
so you'll just go down, down, up on eena, and then for
the next octave you'll be on theDMNG strings, and for the octave after
that, you'll be on the Band high E strings, and that's explained
in a bit more depth in thearticle. And then last but not least,

(03:53):
tip number five is to practice slowly, and so practice slowly so you
can accurately memorize your sweetpicking mode andcommon sweet picking shapes. And also don't
worry too much about muting when you'rejust getting started, and you see,
you can't move on to playing andpracticing fast sweeps if you haven't learned the
motions and the shapes. So Iguess overall, practice slowly and don't worry

(04:18):
too much about muting. And that'sit for my five sweet picking tips.
And of course, if you likethis episode of the Guitar Jet podcast,
make sure that you subscribe to thepodcast and go ahead and rate my show.
No matter what podcast platform you're using, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or whatever,
just go ahead and rate the showand join my Facebook group, the

(04:38):
Guitar Techniques Society. All right,thank you again so much for listening,
and have a good day,