Chris Evans - 3 String Sweeping Exercise SI Lesson
Introduction
Not a solo here to learn as such this time, this is purely an exercise for people wanting to learn to start sweep picking, as with all techniques you need to start off very slow and build up to the speed your looking for. I`ve called this a beginner "+" lesson as with this exercise you can start off learning to sweep pick (maybe pick one of the slower backings to start with) and build upwards, hence the "+" :)
I found that sweep picking was one of the hardest techniques to get a grip of, I`m still looking at my sweep picking to improve it further, for me its a technique that I learnt much later in my playing career and wished I`d started a lot sooner!
when trying to sweep pick you need to be as smooth as possible, and glide the pick over the strings in unison with your fretting hand, as with everything its a matter of practising over and over and over again, but once you get the mechanics of sweep picking it will all start to come together, 5 string sweeping is also a fantastic tool to learn, but for me I found learning how to 3 string sweep well first made 5 string sweeping a whole lot easier!
With this exercise I`m not going to go into much detail with regards keys and tabbing out each section, I`ve provided tabs for each sweep position, this exercise should help you build up sweep picking speed and get you into moving the sweep pattern around as well, I`m only using two sweep pattern shapes which are minor & major patterns.
Each video that is provided is for demonstration purposes to show you how to increase your speed from very slow to fast using just one backing track at 120BPM, I have provided 100BPM and 80BPM backing tracks also to help with speed when you move on a bit later :)
So again here is the main video where I have combined various stages of speed that you can try out from very slow to finishing with fast sweeping.
Main Video
3_string_sweep_exercise_main_video.wmv ( 9.59MB )
So, now lets start off with the slowest speed first, same backing at 120BPM but whats being played is slow, this is to get the fingers and brain all working together, once the notes are firmly implanted in the memory you can start to think about the next step.
Heres what you should be aiming at to begin with.
Demo Vid 1
Demo_1.wmv ( 8.92MB )
You can see in Video 1 what fingering that I am using to play these arpegios.
Ok so lets look at the tabs
First position is a minor arpegio
Position 1
H/P
E||-------------8---12----8--------------||
B||-------10--------------------10-------||
G||--9--------------------------------9--||
D||---------------------------------------||
A||---------------------------------------||
E||---------------------------------------||
To explain the picking a little further, looking at the above tab we pick with a down stroke on the 9th, 10th and 8th fret, then using the pinky hammer on the 12th fret pulling off to make the 8th fret ring and pick with an up stroke the 10th and 9th fret, apply this to each arpeggio.