QUOTE (dark dude @ Mar 26 2012, 01:24 PM)
If you can arrange the notes in anything as 1 or 2 note per string licks, you can sweep it (add some tapping if the gap between the notes is too large).
The problem with sweeping a scale is that the notes will be relatively close. To sweep you need 1 note per string, so if the next note is 2 frets higher (and so forth for the other notes), you'll be looking for that note on the next string, and there'll come a point where it'll be too far away.
You can end up with several smaller sweeps, featuring more than 1 note per string and tapping to include all the scale notes, if you really had to. To be honest though, you wouldn't end up with much of a sweep section, hence why arpeggios are commonly used.
Yeah, this is exactly the case.
You wouldn't be able to hit all of the intervals in a scale because they're too close together to have a 1 note per string pattern. The closest thing you can do to this is economy picking. Frank Gambale alters the standard pentatonic box shapes so he can economy pick the scale with a different note grouping on each string. However, you've got to ask yourself if it's really worth doing it for the sake of running through an entire scale from top to bottom. If you're going through a scale, you just as well play it using picking, legato or both.
The beauty of sweep picking and arpeggios in general is that they have an intervallic sound - which means the intervals are not close to each other. It's a method which enables you to hit notes that are on different strings in quick succession. The combination of the sweeping technique and the arpeggios create the overall sound. If you break it up to work with with a scale, you'd only be able to do an occasional sweep and combine it with hammer ons or picking to be able to move through the scale shapes, which would lose the 'sweep sound' anyway
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