3 Sweep Picking Mistakes That Make It Tough To Play Arpeggios Accurately

Struggling to play arpeggios like you want? Sweep picking is very easy when you don’t make the same mistakes mediocre players frequently make.

Avoid these 3 common mistakes that make it hard to sweep pick cleanly and fast:

Mistake #1: Not isolating the rolling motion in the fretting hand.

Playing with a clean tone hides your sloppy mistakes. Playing with distortion exposes them.

Clean tone makes it impossible to hear when some notes are bleeding together or when some strings are not being muted as they should be.

Distortion makes these mistakes extremely obvious.

Isolate the rolling motion and practice to play it cleanly. Instead of treating rolling like a barre, collapse the knuckles of your finger to fret a note while lightly dampening the previous string to keep it from ringing out. This helps your arpeggios sound sparkling clean!

Mistake #2: Allowing the pick to come to a stop in between each string.

Playing a clean sweep picking arpeggio is done by making two key motions: one motion of the hand down when picking and ascending and one motion up while descending. Stopping the pick at any point in between kills your momentum and makes it impossible to keep your hands in sync. This leads to missed notes and sloppy playing.

It doesn’t matter how many notes there are in the arpeggio or how many hammer ons, pull offs (or tapped notes) it contains. The pick still does only one motion to ascend and one motion to descend the arpeggio.

Your pick needs to fall into each string and push to the next one similar to the string of a bow. This continues the momentum. If you perform a hammer on/pull of in the fretting hand, your pick should continue pushing on the next string that will be played.

Mistake #3: Not properly isolating the rolling movement in your fretting hand

It’s not uncommon for guitar players to spend a lot of time practicing arpeggios on clean settings or unplugged. However, don’t make the mistake of doing this too often. Playing with distortion helps you hear where your technique breaks down so you know the exact notes that need to be corrected and can identify why they are sloppy.

Practice isolating the rolling motion in order to eliminate sloppiness. Remember: rolling is not the same as using a barre. Each note of the arpeggio needs to sound individually, without blending together with other notes. This is an important reason why practicing with distortion is so helpful. Distortion makes it obvious when your rolling technique is sloppy and needs to be corrected.

There are many more ways to play great-sounding sweep picking arpeggios. Learn more about the easiest ways to master one of the most popular shred guitar techniques by reading this sweep picking technique article.