Perfect Your Sweeping

Welcome back fellow IG'ers! For this tutorial, I wanted to have some fun with sweep arpeggios. I've been getting a lot of questions lately pertaining to how to go about executing them cleanly. In this lesson, we'll be examining two etudes, one containing straight forward major and minor arps, the second containing some pretty wacky ones. So let's begin by nailing down one of the most important aspects of arpeggio cleanliness - "inside picking". So as demonstrated above, we're moving through three, three-string arpeggios. The main focus of this, however, is to really execute proper picking. The issue usually arises soon after playing the first couple notes. For instance, in the first arpeggio, E minor, after pulling off from the 19th to 15th fret on the high E string, our next note is the 17th on the B string. The first pick stroke is down, the next is up - so what's happening is, after we pick downward on the E string, we're picking upward on the B. This is defined as "inside picking", as our pick strokes always remain "inside" the two strings. The same thing occurs on the opposite end of the arpeggio. After picking up on the G string, we're instantly picking down on the B string. This transition may prove to be even more challenging since we don't have the leeway of a break for a pull-off. There's really no secret (other than tons of practice) to make these little nuisances feel natural. Take it slow, make it clean... Then we'll go crazy!