Five Exercises to Improve Sweep Now!

Hi Joe Kataldo here, sweep/economy picking is one of the most beautiful producing sound technique to play fast. While many instructional book and video, pretends to teach you sweeps with actual music work and arpeggios, instead I've developed a series of exercises that will take you back to the basics of this techniques analyzing the main mechanical-finger movements.


Exercise 1:
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Concentrate on two notes, played over two strings, the video shows only the index medium combination, but if you really wanna improve you have to practice all the other combinations:

Fingerings:

1-2 1-3 1-4 2-3 2-4 3-4

Exercise 2:
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Play adjacent notes like 4th intervals on guitar is one of the most difficult execution, and in sweep too. So why don't develop a specific exercise? The first note needs to be played whit the point of your fingers tips, while the second, with a rolling motion (check the video) with the face of the finger tips, allowing us to instantly mute the string not played. Play this exercise with the 2nd, 3rd and 4th finger too.


Exercise 3:
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Times to move to three notes on three strings, same as ex. 1 experiment all the possible combination.

Fingerings:

1-2-3 1-2-4 1-3-4 2-3-4


Exercise 4:
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Same as Ex.2 but over three string, play it with the 2nd, 3rd and 4th finger too.


Exercise 5:
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Same as Ex.1 but using all four left hand fingers.



Save your movements, be economic and sweeps a lot!


Joe Kataldo