Mini-Canon
Sweeping Lesson

By
‘Roo’

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HERE FOR THE AUDIO (.wav)

Welcome
to this sweeping lesson.


Inspired by Johann Pachelbel, The mini canon is my adaptation
of the famous chords progression. If you are a new comer with
sweeping technique this is the right lesson because it’s
melodic, sounds great at any speed and also because it’s
a classic so you have to know it!

On
each chord goes a 16th triplet’s group of notes. Each group
of 16th note is the very arpeggio taken from the chord. So you
find the same notes. Everything is played over 5 strings.
What is an arpeggio?
An arpeggio is the notes of a chord played separately (one after
each other). For example: you can play a chord with open strings
and let ring each note or chose to fret each note on a different
place on the fingerboard.

What
is “sweeping”?
“Sweeping” is a technique where you pick each string
“downstroke” for ascending and “upstroke”
for descending. Once mastered, this technique allows to play quite
fast.
Notice that it is important to play each note separately then.
The 1st note must stop rigging when the 2nd note starts and so
on.
That’s why it’s difficult at beginning. It’s
a matter of synchronisation between the pick and the left hand
(fingerboard hand).
So I advice to practice palm mute at the beginning by muting the
strings at the bridge with your right hand’s palm so that
the sound of each note keep under control.

The
“mini Canon”:
Those arpeggios here are made of 3 sounds or notes. Major(1st-3rd-5th)
and Minor (1st-3rd minor-5th)
Basically you have to learn one position for the minor and one
position for the major to be abble to play it.
What I find interesting in this exercise is that it uses different
posibilities of fingerings.
Lets scheddule those 2 bars in 8 sections (1section/chord). [2majors,
2 minors, 4 majors] with 4 differents arpeggios positions. Those
4 positions are the most overknown positions in Shred style simply
because they are the easiest ( or less challenging) to play and
are very used in neo-classical music.
There a countless variations possibles then but (IMO) it’s
good to start with those ones.

1-
E (major) upstroke and pull-off, upstroke, upstroke, upstroke,
upstroke.
2- B (major) Downstroke and hammer on, downstroke, downstroke,
downstroke, downstroke
/!On fret 16th (D/G/B strings) play with the lefthand 2nd finger.
Its difficult to play notes separately then.
3- C# (minor) upstroke and pull-off, upstroke, upstroke, upstroke,
upstroke.
4- G# (minor) Downstroke and hammer on, downstroke, downstroke,
downstroke, downstroke
/! On fret 14th (G/B strings) play with 3rd finger.

5-
A (major) same than for the first E section but starts on the
12th fret.
6- E (major) same than for B section but starts on the 7th fret.
7- A (major) same than for the first E section but starts on the
12th fret.
8- B (major) same than for the first E section but starts on the
14th fret.


Memorize all the notes and practice very, very slowly at beginning.
Then practice with metronome at slow speed. Remember to play 6
notes/beat for 16th triplets. Don’t mistaken playing fast
and rushing notes. You must hear each single note, not only the
first and the last. Practice with crunch or clean sound at beginning.

I hope you like this lesson. I want to thank this great website
for hosting this free lesson. Don’t forget to bookmark my
web site!
www.rooguitar.com

Roo
has released and instructional
DVD available now in the Shred Academy shop, as well as pioneered
the new creative guitar software called ‘66
Licks‘ also available in the shop now. He is currently working
on other guitar methods coming soon.