If you are struggling to play your sweep picking arpeggios fast and clean then you are not alone. I suffered from the same problem, years ago. In fact, this is one of the most common problems that I have helped my guitar students overcome. In doing this, I’ve discovered 2 different ways to approach this challenge. The first will make you frustrated and keep you bogged down in poor technique. The other will allow you immense improvement, quickly.
Which Approach Do You Take?
Guitar Practice Approach 1: If your sweep picking arpeggios aren’t as clean or fast as you would like, it is easy to think that you are not practicing the right arpeggio licks. This approach’s biggest problem is that you are ignoring the issues that stem from your bad technique. By focusing your energy on finding NEW licks, you take your focus away fixing the real problems with your guitar technique. So you will end up knowing a lot of different arpeggios, but they will be poorly executed and sloppy.
Guitar Practice Approach 2: If you want to clean up your arpeggio playing then don’t take your focus away from your technique problems with more arpeggios. Instead, make whatever lick you are currently working an independent exercise. Doing this will show you which notes are sloppy and you can see why and how these problems are happening. This will help you in 2 different ways:
- By fixing your technique problems in your first exercise, you will find that any and all sweep picking licks you practice in the future will be much cleaner and faster
- By changing these boring arpeggio shapes your new exercises will often become cool and unique on their own. Now you can use these new sweep picking licks to help improve your guitar solos.
For additional help playing creative and clean sweep picking arpeggios, take shred guitar lessons online with an experienced teacher.
How To Apply This Idea Into Your Guitar Practicing To Make Your Guitar Playing Better:
The most important lesson here is NOT the arpeggio exercises. It is NOT even playing the notes of your arpeggios with tremolo (as demonstrated in the video). The most important thing you should take away from this lesson is that you have to use the correct mindset when you approach solving ANY kind of problem areas in you guitar playing.
- Problems and mistakes in your guitar playing are not random – they are always caused by bigger problems. These causes must be identified. Then isolated and fixed. If you settle for sloppy guitar playing, then you will never reach your goals.
- If you are just looking for more guitar exercises, then you aren’t improving. Understand exactly which notes aren’t clean when you play your current exercise. This will help you make EVERYTHING you play cleaner and better.
- You can modify even the most boring exercises in a creative way. You will improve your guitar technique and create awesome licks in the process.
The video showed you just one of the many examples of how to greatly improve your guitar technique. To check out even more strategies for improving your guitar playing, make sure you go look at this page on playing guitar faster.
Learn many creative ways to use sweep picking in your guitar playing by taking neoclassical guitar lessons. To get the most out of this article, organize the practice ideas you learned into an effective guitar practice schedule.
About The Author: Tom Hess is a professional guitar player and teacher. He trains guitarists from all over the world through his online guitar lessons . On his website, tomhess.net you can get more information about playing guitar. Visit his Facebook page with guitar and music tips and follow him on the official Tom Hess Google Plus page.
