This is a sweep:


|-------------------------------|
|-------------------------------|
|------------9h12p9------------|
|-------8h11--------11p8-------|
|-7h10-------------------10p7--|
|-------------------------------|

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a sweep is nearly always an arpeggio, but an arpeggio is'nt allways a sweep, e.g.
|-0h4h7t12-| would bre an arpeggio, because that are the tones of E Major, but i think you agree the this is not a sweep. a sweep is anything played at one note per string eventually a hammer on/pull off on the first/last tone and while playing it you just move your pick as if you play a normal chord, but play each note single

I reccomend that all beginners in sweep picking check out John Petrucci's Rock Discipline video/dvd. He covers the basics and gives you some easy sweeps to get started with. If your more advanced it's great as well, because he throws in several hard sweeps.

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a quick question - is it good practice to also 'reverse sweep'? Ie down stroke the top note of the scale then sweep back down?

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yeah steve vai does it all the time, petrucci has done it more than a few times too.

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All exercises should be practiced forewards and backwords.

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bear with me guys, i'm not quite sure about the concept of sweeping yet, although it seems like it ought to be fairly simple to understand.

can i sweep, say, the ionian scale? somebody said one note per string, but can i practice picking once and hammering twice per string? i mean, yeah, i can practice that :P and have been, but is that considered a sweep?

it seems to be helping me either way, but i just wanted to make sure i know what an actual sweep is. thanks

Swep whatever you want. When you have more than 1 note per string I always use hammer-ons and pull-offs. Except the highest and lowest string in the arpeggio cause that keeps my timing right.

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i can sweep up scales pretty well even when each string has 2 hammer ons, but i find it nearly impossible to pick down the same sweeps with any sort of speed.

are there any tips that i'm missing with pickoff speed? when i started, i'd put all my fingers down, but now i barely put the next finger right behind my pickoff finger before i pick it off, and it still seems impossible to do quickly

or, do people just not do it that quickly down scales?

i'm getting pretty frustrated.. advice/sympathy would be good thx

On a sweep, you shouldn't let the other notes sound the same time(like a chord), it will sound messy, so yeah, lift your fingers of the note after you play it.

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Oh man, here is something I should have added at the very beginning of this thread. Its the order of modes.

Ionian
Dorian
Phrygian
lydian
Mixolydian
Aeolian
Locrian

Each scale starts on the 2nd note of the previous scale. In any key, the pattern is always the same and this is important to know, it opens up alot of notes.

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Bombass thread darko . I'm already starting to get this down and I've been playing for 6 months. You are the new Jesus.

ahh darko, yah, the order of the modes is quite helpful i had just learned them last week and was finally figuring out how to put all that stuff in your first post together, and now it all makes sense anyway heheh. really good stuff you put up.. i know it's helping a lot of us.

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just goin through this thread again, and there seems to be a misunderstanding.

yes, ionian = major, and that scale is in fact the same thing (almost anyway) as darko's major scale. it looks different, because, as you know, you can play a note on one string, and play it on a low fret on the next higher string. that's what they've done there.. they've also left out a few notes, and darko's covers every note in the scale.

Thanks for those killer sweep practices Pablo.

Yeah, the scales that I posted seem to be the best. Most people leave out notes, mix it up, ect.

Im planning some time soon to take all the sweeps and extra scales that people posted (and some of my own) and just make them all into one big post on the first page so people don't have to go through and find them.

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that'd be pretty helpful. it's always nice to cure boredom with a new scale.

i have a question about sweeps, which i've just started to practice in the past few days. when i start out, really slowly, i basically just pick each string and it's not much of a "strum". i just can't do it that fast yet, and my roommate said he thinks that i'm doing it wrong by not trying to move my pick hand completely evenly like you do with a chord. i kind of jump my pick hand to the next string. will i just be able to strum down the strings in time if i keep practicing it this way? do i just not have the speed yet? or do i have to practice in a very even "strum"?

Eh, you strum like you would a "rolled" chord, but after you play the note you're supposed to lift your fingers. Ya, know, so only one note is heard at a time.

I just found out something really cool. For us beginners, Flesh and the Power it Holds by Death is a good song to practice sweeping.

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right, i got that it should sound like individual notes bein played. im just not sure whether my right hand is doing what it should be. that song is downloading now, though, thanks for the tip

The other day I was dicking around with some tapping stuff I had in my head when I decided to tap out an arpeggio real fast. I played something like this:


B |---------------------------t-----19p12h15p12--|
F#|--------------------t-----18p13--t-------------|
D |-------------t-----18p14-----------------------|
A |------t-----18p14------------------------------|
E |-h12-19p15------------------------------------|
A |-----------------------------------------------|

Then go back up to the E-string using the same pattern. It's played at the same speed as if you were sweeping it (the notes must also be distinct like a sweep) with the taps effectivly taking the place of the pick striking the strings.

Anyway, I was wondering if anybody could give me an example of any guitarists who've used this technique or any more examples of it.

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