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Sweep Picking Blues Licks
Sweep Picking Blues Licks
Sweep picking is often reserved for arpeggios, although the technique works great when playing scales. Sweep picking or economy picking produces a fast, legato-sounding result whilst retaining a good level of attack.
When applying the sweep picking technique to pentatonic scales and the blues scale, the left-hand fingering (or right-hand fingering if you are a left-handed guitarist) often requires difficult hand stretches.
My hands are not overly large so if you also do not have large hands, these types of licks will require good attention to the thumb position at the back of the neck and might feel uncomfortable at first.
How Do I Sweep Pick?
Sweep picking is achieved by playing notes on different strings with one pick stroke. The picking hand strums the strings and the left-hand controls note separation. The angle of the pick is very important as it needs to glide easily across the strings. If the angle of the pick is not correct, it will dig into the guitar strings and sweep picking will not be possible.
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Blues Scale Sweep Picking Unit
This lick can be looped for as long as you want to extend the idea. It will require your left hand to stretch further than when playing regular blues scale fingerings, although the stretchy fingering allows for fast flurries of notes to be played.
Licks that can loop are great for practising as you can play continuously and work on other areas such as dynamics, tone production, speed, accents, etc., as you go. Basically, you want to keep playing the lick while making it sound as good as possible.
Be sure to play this lick on all the possible string sets that accommodate the fingering. Once you have this technique mastered, I'm sure you will be able to use the idea when experimenting and improvising using other scales.
A Blues Scale Sweep Picking Lick
This long sweep-picking blues scale lick will give you a great technique workout.
Take your time with this one and break the lick down into smaller sections. I like to break licks into parts that begin and end on a beat. In this way, you have markers throughout the lick which help you to keep in time.
Accenting the beat always helps too. Accenting notes when sweep picking is much more difficult than when alternate picking, so this might also cause you difficulties.
Playing with an overdriven sound requires playing licks slightly differently, so be sure to practise this, and all other licks using a clean sound and an overdriven sound.
Sweep Picking Blues Lick In Octaves
This lick uses a similar fingering idea to the previous lick, although is much shorter. As the lick is shorter, it should be much easier to insert it into your guitar solos.
Be sure to practise this, and all other licks in various keys. Also, practise the lick using a variety of beat subdivisions. Try quavers, triplets, and semiquavers and keep doubling the units of 3 or 4 notes per whatever subdivision of the beat works for you at the time.
Always be aware of which notes coincide with the strong parts of the beat. It is very easy to lose time when sweep-picking fast runs.
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