Welcome back! In this article I wanna talk to you about shredding on guitar. One of the most awesome and useful techniques that I’ve learned a few years ago is “sweep picking”.
Sweep picking is definitely the most shredding technique among guitar players and it’s the easiest one to apply, I mean you just pick a chord quality and arpeggiate it. It’s not like you have to deal with all the tensions etc. And it’s easy to play fast, since you are sweeping. So I’m going to share with you a great sweep picking progression, but before that let’s check out the most basic chords. This is a C chord, arpeggiated using sweep picking:
Very easy to play. The first note (3) you play it with an upstroke. The second note and the rest is
played with a downstroke, until you reach the next “V” which stands for upstroke. Now let’s
check out a Cm chord:
You should practice both of these chords at different speeds. It’s very important that mute the
string you are not using with right hand (your picking hand). Sweep picking tends to be a very
sloppy and dirty technique; you have to master the art of muting unwanted strings if you wanna
be a sweep picker.
The next progression I’m going to show you is quite challenging but, if played correctly, it can be
really awesome. Let’s check it out:
The idea of this is to arpeggiate chords starting from the higher strings. It’s complicated at first but then with practice, it’s no more difficult than the regular way. I would suggest dividing it in sections; basically, practice each chord separately because it will be much easier. I would also suggest you to start it at a very low speed, just to get the idea and the patterns. Another very important thing is knowing how to barre strings.
Barring is a very important part of sweep picking. If 2 or more notes are on the same fret but different strings, you barre them; it is way easier trust me. Other than that, start slower and progressively increase the tempo.
That is all for today. I hope you have enjoyed this article and please remember to check out more of our videos at: