If you’re looking to become a better Metal Guitarist, you’ve either already started pursuing sweep picking or have been thinking about it. You may think that it seems too difficult or nearly impossible to do as well as some of your favorite guitarists. The truth is, if you know how to approach it properly, it’s easier to learn how to sweep pick than you think it is.

There are a lot of myths out there about talent and it’s easy to believe them when you see someone expertly blasting through sweep arpeggios, with each note being perfectly clear and articulate. In reality, talent has NOTHING to do with sweep picking. It’s all about knowing how to practice the technique correctly and putting the proper amount of time in.

If that seems like a controversial idea to you, take some time to read about some of the studies that have been done on the subject. Technical skill is not really a characteristic of natural talent. It’s simply a reflection of the time that has been put into practicing something. The literature is clear on that point. If there is such a thing as talent, it’s pretty much limited to musical sensibility and the connection of your ear to your instrument.

Another factor that’s important is to have access to the right sweep picking exercises and sweep picking patterns. If you approach practicing sweep picking correctly, with the right patterns at your finger tips, you will be able to push forward at the right times while continuously expanding your “arsenal.” Over time, this will lead to you having an intuitive understanding of how sweep arpeggios work, which is critical if you wish to write your own solos or use sweep patterns while improvising.

I’ve always been fascinated with sweep picking. Ever since I first heard it, it struck me just how much more could be done on the guitar with that single technique. It opens up the possibility of playing music written for the piano or harp, in the same way the violin’s analogous bowing technique does. It vastly increases the potential for dynamic effect in solos, improvisation and compositions for the guitar. It became something of an obsession for me for a long time.

As a result of spending over 20 years studying, teaching, experimenting, utilizing and adapting sweep technique, I made a very large number of distinctions. These came in the form of optimal learning and practice methods, methods of rapidly memorizing patterns, building an intuitive knowledge of how sweep patterns work and methods of attaining absolute perfect precision and articulation at extreme speeds.

By understanding these methods, it makes it easy to find, expand on, or change any pattern as it’s needed. It also opens up for the incredible possibility of seeing the fretboard, and how the notes and scales are laid out, in an entirely new way. This is something that allows for an unbelievable degree of mastery in improvisation for just about any style you can think of.

Coming to these conclusions, and seeing how well a lot of it worked with students back when I taught private lessons, I decided to put everything together for other guitarists to learn from. This started with the making of The Sweep Picking Compendium, which all said and done contains a total of 455 sweep arpeggio patterns. However, it soon became clear that most of the information contained in the compendium was too obscure on its own for players to learn what I wanted them to learn. That’s when I decided to make the Compendium’s video lesson counterpart Sweep Picking Mastery.

With Sweep Picking Mastery, a guitarist can learn all of the correct practice methods that are so critical to breaking through the common frustrations associated with learning sweep picking. With these methods, a player will achieve absolute precision and clear articulation with their sweep picking. The patterns in Sweep Picking Mastery go from basic all the way up to advanced 6-string multi-tapped sweep arpeggios. Every step of the Mastery course is mirrored by the sections of the Sweep Picking Compendium. When the two products are combined, the player will have everything they could ever need to go from beginner to absolute master level.

From there I combined the two products together, with some extras, to create The Sweep Picking MEGA Pack.

Tension and Release: Tell a story with your improvisation

So here we are on part 3 of our Improvisation Mastery Series.  It’s going to get more and more enjoyable from here.  If you haven’t started on part 1 or 2, but you want to be able to improvise like your favorite guitarists, what are you waiting for?  

None of this is going to be particularly challenging, it’s super fun, and doing it is going to give you something that you really want, it will give you an amazing sense of accomplishment, it will amaze any audience and will become something awesome that you can do with your guitar any time of day.

You can start right now with Part 3, but you’ll have a massive disadvantage by missing the first two exercises. 

Need to go back?  Click for Part 1 or Part 2

Okay, let’s begin. 

If you spent a good deal of time with the drone exercise, no doubt you noticed that certain notes sounded great for ending a phrase.   Some notes gave resolution and some notes created tension or even pulled the music forward towards the next phrase.   This is no accident and it’s not just a quirk of how you appreciate music.  This is the “language” of notes in their relationship to one another.  

In the E-minor scale, we have the basic triad of the root Em chord.  In the case of Em, those notes are E (1) G (m3) and B (5).  

You can easily remember the notes of the Em triad by using the mnemonic device, “EGBert.”   

When you get to the video, you’ll find a link in the description for a tab that shows where those notes can be found in the scale you were working with for the drone exercise.  We will also be using that scale again today.  

So how do the notes of the triad relate to improvising?

While playing over an Em chord, if you end a phrase on the E note (the root or “1”), you will get pure resolution.  Think of this as giving closure to a musical phrase or passage.  Songs often resolve to the root note at the end to give closure. This works great in improvisation for bringing closure to a series of phrases, or to create a structure to your improvisation.  For example, if you resolve every other phrase on the root note, it creates a “call and response” feel.  

While playing over an Em chord, if you end a phrase on the G (the minor 3rd or “m3”), you will get a slightly more tense, yet harmonic pull back to the E (or to the beginning of the next phrase).  If you’re going down from the minor 3rd to the root, it will have a “walking” sound to it.   Combined with the root, you get a nice harmonic resolution.  

While playing over an Em chord, if you end a phrase on the B (the 5th or 5) you will get a slight tension with an “airy” sound to it.  More importantly though is the 5th’s “magnetic” attraction to the root.  There is very little more satisfying in music than a 5th pulling you back to the root.  On its own, it doesn’t sound like much.  In context, it can sound absolutely amazing.

Now, this is actually just the beginning of the story.  These 3 notes are the easiest notes to emphasize over an Em chord while making it sound good.  Every note in the scale will have its own distinct character to it in relation to the chord being played (or in the case of the drone, the implied chord).  You can experiment with other notes from the scale to see how it sounds.   The 7th or 2nd are notes that are as close to the root note as you can get in the scale. The closer notes are to each other, the more dissonant they sound in relation to each other.  This creates more tension.  However, with notes like the 2nd or 7th, there is also a “pull” that happens towards the root note.  Ending a phrase on one of these notes and then starting the next phrase on the root creates a very satisfying tension that pulls to resolution.  

Now that’s just talking about what note you land on at the end of a phrase.  However, this idea works the same for any part of the phrase.  You can be thinking in terms of the notes you begin a phrase with, a note you emphasize in the middle of a phrase, or a single note you hold.  It can really be anything.  The most important thing is that you should be paying attention to how each note sounds in relation to the next (and in relation to the chord behind it) and how it interacts with notes around it.  You want the notes to be pulling to other notes, and creating satisfying resolutions.  

The easiest way to think of what makes an improvisation satisfying, interesting and “correct” sounding, is by looking at it as different versions of tension and resolution.  All the notes you play in the phrase can be thought of as passing tones.  If none of these tones created tension, the phrase would be totally boring.  It’s the fact that each phrase takes you on a little journey through tension and resolution that makes it sound melodic and interesting.  

So, for this week, I’ve put together a simple backing track for you.  It’s effectively an Em vamp.  The goal here is to start adding in some intentional tension and resolution.   Really pay attention to how each note relates to the others and think about it like you’re telling a story with your phrases.   Think about ebb and flow, tension and release, commas and periods, build-up and climax.  

Start out by simply focusing on and emphasizing the three notes from the triad E, G and B (again, you can find the tab in the description of the video).  Play any other note from the scale in between but, at the least, start out by ending each phrase with one of those notes.  This will start to give you a feel for what they do.  Once you get comfortable with it, start testing the water with other notes from the scale.  

You can find the backing track here as an unlisted video on my YouTube channel: 
https://youtu.be/KaC-LbeOjrM

This gets a lot more interesting when you’re playing over a multiple-chord progression.  It can also become a lot more complex to try to think about what’s happening.  This is why you really want to be able to do this by ear as much as possible – which is the main goal of this entire series.  

Okay, have fun and I’ll be back next week!

Dan Mumm

Looking for that next challenge?  Check out my massive catalog of guitar related products, covering everything from Metal versions of Classical pieces, Neo-Classical Shred technique, Sweep Picking, and more!  See what’s on sale today at the link below:

www.Sellfy.com/DanMumm