New Lesson - Sweep Picking Triad Arpeggios

mosiddiqi

mosiddiqi

The Curry Master
Staff member
I came up with this etude for practicing sweep picking triad arpeggios, which I find the most useful for introducing sweep picking into actual solo's. I played some in the recent "Holy Scubadiver" jam and couple of people asked me about them, so I thought I'd show you what I do to practise these. The first section of the piece focuses exclusively on sweeping down, and the second part works on sweeping up.

The key to the technique is to keep your right hand very, very relaxed and let the pick "glide" across the strings. For alternate picking, I move my thumb and index finger quite a bit, but for sweep picking I find it better to keep them steady and keep my thumb straight. "Tight but Loose" to quote an old description of Led Zeppelin. :embarrassed:. If you play with a lot of distortion like I do..:embarrassed:..muting out as much unwanted noise with your right hand palm and left hand fingers is important too.

Where the left hand needs to bar across two or more strings, you need to practice rapid fretting and muting using a "rubber stamp" type motion, rolling the finger in question across the strings, trying to ensure that the notes are kept as separate as possible and not played together like you would for a chord.

The first (sweep down) section uses the following arpeggios:




​

The second (mostly sweep up) section uses the following arpeggios:

​

Sweep up the first three notes and then downstroke on the 4th.

The chord progession that these arpeggios cover is Am/GMaj/FMaj/EMaj/CMaj/DMaj/ CMaj/GMaj/Am/Bdim/Ddim/Fdim/G#dim

Here's an example, I'll let you work out how many times to play each arpeggio for this piece:

http://www.box.net/shared/fuoxg0ytoq

Play slowly with a metronome, have fun, get it as clean as possible and then get your Yngwie on! :rawk:
 
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paulskirocks said:
Thanks, Mo. I look forward to messing with this. I am still practicing the Blackmore riff, by the way...
Click to expand...

Cheers Paul, having transcribed that Blackmore lick, I've now heard him use the exact same one in live versions of "Child in Time" and even "Stargazer"..it's obviously a favourite of his.
 
OK, I've got a pretty good handle on the up-sweep ones. Got 'em pretty much up to speed too. But I just can't make my fingers do the down-sweep ones.
:mad:
 
micwalt said:
OK, I've got a pretty good handle on the up-sweep ones. Got 'em pretty much up to speed too. But I just can't make my fingers do the down-sweep ones.
:mad:
Click to expand...

Mike, what I would do is to try the sweeping down action using muted open strings, say the G and B string. Just mute everything with your left hand and then sweep down on those two strings, exaggerate the movement so you can clearly hear it as two separate notes. Do this for a bit and then take one of those arpeggio shapes, say this G Major one:

​

..and play only the G and B string notes..keep switching back to muting everything and sweeping down on the open G and B to get "sync'd in" with what the sweep should sound like. If you can get it smooth on 2 strings, adding more strings actually gets easier I've found. No question you'll nail it :)

:thu:
 
So, 'mo... when are you going to become a snob and start posting these lessons in a "standard notation only" format? :tongue:
 
Flamencology said:
So, 'mo... when are you going to become a snob and start posting these lessons in a "standard notation only" format? :tongue:
Click to expand...

:grin:..actually, as my confidence improves with writing/reading notation, I might post these with notation & Tab..:embarrassed:..it's all good practice for me I guess.
 
The first bit in Notation :embarrassed:
 

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BTW, I used this http://musescore.org/ to do the above score..just got it last night so still trying to work it all out..:embarrassed:..but it's free and seems like a decent alternative (at that price :embarrassed:) to something like Sibelius.

Also, I noticed that whilst I hear that piece as straight 16th notes..and that's how I've written it out..I don't yet know how to notate the particular "drag & rush" effect that sweep picking has on a line like that. Any pointers?
 
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mosiddiqi said:
BTW, I used this http://musescore.org/ to do the above score..just got it last night so still trying to work it all out..:embarrassed:..but it's free and seems like a decent alternative (at that price :embarrassed:) to something like Sibelius.

Also, I noticed that whilst I hear that piece as straight 16th notes..and that's how I've written it out..I don't yet know how to notate the particular "drag & rush" effect that sweep picking has on a line like that. Any pointers?
Click to expand...

Nice! About the rhythms, how exactly are you playing them? Does it sound like a 16th note triplet and two sixteenth notes per beat?
 
Mark Wein said:
Nice! About the rhythms, how exactly are you playing them? Does it sound like a 16th note triplet and two sixteenth notes per beat?
Click to expand...

Against the click, I'm playing/hearing it as just a regular 4 16th notes per beat ( I think I've got that right :embarrassed:)..but something about the staccato nature of the sweep is hard to get across on paper for me. Actually, I just realised that the above notation created a MIDI sound file..so when I get home I'll compare that to what I'm actually playing and see where I might make the notation more accurate :idea:
 
It's funny because with the standard notation that Mark put up, I understand that better than the tablature. I see and hear the music in my head. With the tablature, I just see numbers on lines, IMO the tab just tells me where to play it. Hmmm....I guess my reading is better than I thought. :tongue:
 
Modern Saint said:
It's funny because with the standard notation that Mark put up, I understand that better than the tablature. I see and hear the music in my head. With the tablature, I just see numbers on lines, IMO the tab just tells me where to play it. Hmmm....I guess my reading is better than I thought. :tongue:
Click to expand...

:thu:
 
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