The technique can make you look cooler, but it’s not easy to nail – these are the biggest problems with your sweep picking and how to fix them

There are few guitar techniques that get jaws to hit the floor quite like sweep picking. A flurry of lightning-quick, smoother than a baby’s bottom arpeggio runs atop a blaze of blast beats and power chords is sure to make the crowd go wild.
Unless you suck at it.
Thankfully, John Huldt has delivered a comprehensive sweep picking masterclass for Modern Metal Academy to put your bad habits to bed.
The Swedish guitarist believes the technique is the perfect way to “express your soul” on the instrument – but it isn’t a tricky technique that should be taken lightly. Here’s why your sweep picking sucks and how to fix it.
A SECTOIN OF JOHN'S MASTERCLASS IS AVAILABLE IN OUR PUBLIC AREA
Mastering the motion
With sweep picking, the motion is everything. You don't need to pick every note; instead, you want your string to glide across the strings so you don’t get any bite back from the strings themselves – this will slow you down and ruin the fluidity of the sound produced.
As Huldt says, the motion is closer to strumming than alternate picking. Mastering this motion is the first step to success.
Clean it up
Another other major issue is untidy playing. Typically, notes ringing out where they aren’t supposed to are the culprits here.
As Huldt details, you need to roll your finger across the fretboard so that only the string you are playing rings out, almost imitating a worm-like wriggle, or the lapping of waves. Your finger should be fluid, not stiff. This helps achieve a cleaner sound.
To that end, don’t crank your gain too high. While high gain amp settings can help mask mistakes in some contexts, they also leave you vulnerable to scrappy sweeps if your technique isn’t right – even the tiniest of mistakes can be hellishly accentuated.
We recommend you don’t use a fret wrap either, as they can instil bad habits into your playing.
Start small
Six-string arpeggios can be like riding the most insane roller coaster; it looks cool as hell and the thrill is immense. But if you've never ridden one before, a ride 60ft vertical drop and neck-snapping corkscrews isn't the best place to start.
As such, Huldt's lessons start with two string arpeggios – in major and minor – to guide you through the sweep picking mechanics. This exercise is a great way to get comfortable with playing two strings with one sweeping movement, which you can then take to more complex arpeggios in time.
“What you'll discover is its really hard to co-ordinate your hands [at first],” Huldt explains. Repetition is the key to locking in your muscle memory.
Patience is a virtue
As the saying (sort of) goes, Yngwie Malmsteen wasn’t built in a day. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
“Make sure you start slow enough so you play it perfect, or close to perfect,” says Huldt. “When you start to feel like you've got that hang of it, that's when you increase the speed. If you got too fast too soon you will sound like shit.”
Level up your practice
If repetitive practice bores the life out of you, try to make a game of it. Start with a metronome at a humble tempo, and then only allow yourself to level up to a faster tempo once you have nailed the exercise five times in a row at that speed.
A 4-8bpm jump each time should be enough to be challenging without rushing too far ahead of yourself and opening yourself up to mistakes and muddy articulation.
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