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A Closer Look At Sweep-Picking
(23 Sep 03)
The left hand
This is the other thing that a lot of beginners struggle with (I did big time!). You do not fret a chord and hold it while applying than "one pick-motion"-sweep with the right hand. Because all the notes will ring together, and that is not what the sweep-technique is about. It will sound sloppy, and it's merely a slow strum.
What you do is you fret that chord (arp) one note at a time. You have to fret each note right when the right hand is picking it, and then let go and mute the string while you move on to the next string. This is the tough part about it: Synchronizing both hands, and fretting accurately with the left hand.
One of the most basic exercises to try after you have worked on the r.h.-exercise above would be this one:
It's basically an A minor arp (A-C-E), and I think that the left hand fingering is quite easy to execute. Fingering: 3rd finger for the A, 2nd finger for the C, 1st finger for the E.
Now, do this SLOWLY: Put your fingers into the right position, kinda resting on or hovering about the strings at the frets you're gonna play at. Then, put down the 3rd finger onto the A, and pick it. Then, slightly lift that finger, relax it, fret the C on the next string with yer 2nd finger, while the pick continues its motion and picks that note.
Then, lift or relax that 2nd finger and fret the E with your first finger at the same moment that the pick arrives at and picks that string.
What you SHOULD hear is ONE NOTE AT A TIME. If you hear two notes together (a diad), you should try again. Some gain might help ya to hear whether the notes are ringing together or not.
A word about gain: Cut back on it. Seriously. It's almost impossible to play high speed sophisticated sweeps with ultra-gain / distortion. Cuz, as you surely know, a lot of distortion tends to amplify and bring out unwanted noises. At high speeds, one tends to generate a few of those (i.e. when ya lift the finger off the note you just played), and the results will be nasty-sounding, although you might have done a good job. So, until you really MASTER sweep-picking, cut back on the gain a bit (I am not talking about Mark Knopfler clean-sounds here. I am talking about cutting back a bit, say from 10 to 7 or so, to clear up the sound a bit. Using the neck-pickup might be a good idea too). So, some gain is helpful to hear whether you're doing it right, too much of it will make it even more difficult.
Do this sweep over and over, till you can nail it. Don't pay too much attention to the note values in the TAB... you can make the rest between each sweep shorter, if you're able to.
Let's reverse the exercise and go backwards (an upward sweep), from E to A:
The first two sweeps in the article have a "let ring" above them. I included those to show you what NOT to do!
If you listen to the ptb-file, you'll hear that the notes ring together, which we wanna avoid. The third sweep and all the others after that are displayed correctly, with one note at a time.
So those are two basic exercises you should work on for a while, until you can execute them accurately.
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