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Sweep Picking - Exercise 2

Richard Lundmark 307 lessons

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Ok then, in this exercise we will look at another crucial aspect of sweeping, the finger roll. And no, this is not an appetizer you might find on Hannibal the Cannibal's dinner table. Whenever you play arpeggios based on the A-form, or E-form barre-chord shapes, you will have some notes being placed directly beneath each other in the arpeggio. To accommodate for this when playing the arpeggio, the easiest way to get things up to speed is to play all these notes using one finger to bar them. However, the goal of course is to not keep the bar finger down, since that would mean that the notes would ring out as a chord, and not broken up as an arpeggio.

When rolling your finger, you will be able to play these arpeggios up to speed, but keep notes from ringing out together. This technique is not easily explained in words, so the best method is like with artificial harmonics, to sit down with it, and work it out until it sounds the way it should. A tip though, is to imagine that the underside of your finger is very rounded, and rocking back and forth like a cradle over the fretboard. At first you can exaggerate the movement to get the feel down, and then work on minimizing it for speed and economy of motion.

Got that down? Great! Then move on to Exercise 3 for some stretchy arps. =)

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