The king of arpeggios
Now let's get the basics in place. As you probably already know, sweep picking is
mostly used to play arpeggio patterns that have one or max two notes on each string
like this popular A-Minor arpeggio:
It's obvious how sweeping from one string to another would be the fastest and
easiest way to play these notes. But while sweep picking is great for going up or
down an arpeggio pattern, it has it's limitations when it comes to playing the notes in
a different and more complex order. As long as you play from the low A to the high
A, sweep picking is your friend, but it doesn't work that well for sequencing arpeggios
but I'll get back to that as well. For now, let's agree that sweep picking is ideal for this
sort of job and that it's also a very manageable skill to develop.
Sweeping is strumming
So let's begin. the first key thing to understand is that when you sweep pick the
above arpeggio, you do it with only one down- or upward motion . You're not
picking the strings with several down or upstrokes, you're "strumming" the strings in
a controlled manner, following your fretting hand accurately.
You can see exactly what I mean in today's video. So what you need to learn is to
create an even flow of notes with your right hand. Your brain has to connect the
speed of your picking hand motion, with how many notes it produces. And the key to
teaching it this, is the same as for all other picking techniques: Accentuation .
When you focus on accenting a few key notes, you make the job much easier on
your brain. So your first and primary point of synchronisation is the first note in the
arpeggio and the second point is the last note on the high E-string. Focus on getting
these two exactly right and perform the in-between-motion as even as you possibly
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