Hello
readers and welcome to my first lesson here at shredacademy.com.
I’ve decided to start with an omnipresent topic nowadays
in the world of shred guitar: the sweep-picking. The kind of sweep-picking
I will discuss here is the distorted wide arpeggio approach of
people like Jason Becker, Rusty Cooley, George Bellas, etc. I
will not discuss here the sweep-picking of players like Frank
Gambale, Marshall Harrison or Shaun Baxter, because their techniques
are a world of its own and represent a whole technical approach
to the guitar. I’ll be referring to it as a tool in your
lick arsenal amongst others.
Trends seem to have imposed that, today, every
virtuoso rock guitarist worth its salt must be capable of pulling
off some arpeggio of this kind. The effect that the pick creates
sweeping the strings is very wild. If it is true that the string
skipping approach à la Paul Gilbert or the alternate-picking
approach in Steve Morse’s style can pull them off cleaner,
the wilderness and sensation of fastness of this approach make
them ideal to use them to create a certain feeling, very suitable
in a rock context: You know, the “I´m gonna shred
to ashes this damn guitar!!!” on-stage thing, the end of
a metal-anthem solo or a duel to death with the guy on the keyboards.
And then my exercise comes into scene. One of
the things that I realized working on this technique is a too
rigid “box” approach. If you are familiar with this
technique, as I believe you probably are (unless you don’t
play guitar or don’t know Youtube), you know the three basic
minor and major positions to sweep 3, 4, 5 or the 6 strings. This
can come in handy in certain situations, but the truth is that
we know that too “boxed” things end up being predictable
(see box pattern for scales) and these very “boxes”,
certainly useful at the beginning as a crutch for learning, make
difficult later a natural, inhibited display.
So the exercise
I bring you includes some details and patterns to try to break
that “box” and to explore and move trough the arpeggio
without losing the fire and wilderness of this technique. As you
can see in the tab and video, a sweeping/legato pattern repeats
itself through some changes. The key is C major and the basic
progression is quite simple: Cmaj, Amin, Fmaj, Gmaj and Cmaj again.
The pattern I use introduces some things you’ll
notice studying the tab and video: first, it takes full advantage
of the sweeping movement of the right hand and the diverse positions
of the notes of the arpeggio, which can come as a great help for
fretboard visualization. And second, the hammer-ons/pull-offs
included are used to add some tensions to the arpeggios in order
to give them a touch of colour. I have selected some 6ths, 7ths
and some pentatonic notes for this exercise, but feel free to
experiment. Also feel free to use this pattern in any arpeggio
you like. By the way, this exercise is not only made to be played
at high speeds. You may very well play it slowly to take advantage
of the tensions in contrast with the backing track if the opportunity
comes.
I just want to advise two more things. In 5-8
measures the rhythm changes to ¾ and there is some cool
sweeping pattern with which you are to play some C maj inversions.
And, in the 4th measure, be careful with some respectable hand
stretches you’ll find.
I hope that you enjoy the lesson and find it useful.
Thanks for reading and see ya!
