Originally Posted by: jiujitsu_jesusOn the weekend, I got one of my first opportunities to jam on the guitar with a player other than my teacher. He was much better than me, so I mostly stuck to rhythm and let him play lead. Towards the end, though, he said that he wanted to try out a head that he'd come up with, so he switched to rhythm and asked me to improvise over it. So improvise, I did. He said that I was good (although I think he was just being kind), and he was surprised that I didn't know how to sweep arpeggios. He seemed to use a fair bit of sweep picking in his leads; he said that I should learn to sweep pick myself if I wanted to sound better. I don't know about this - I'm not much of a speed freak, and besides, I play fingerstyle, so I don't know whether it's even possible for me to sweep pick. What do you guys think - should I learn, or isn't it worth my while?

Mark Knopfler fingerpicks, and his style is almost entirely arpeggios and double stops.