Description
One of the key secrets to sweep picking is in the left hand. Ultimately, what you're shooting for is your left hand articulating each note at the same time that your right hand plucks the string. The way in which I work on this is to try and play the notes in the arpeggio I want to sweep with my left hand only.
For this tutorial, I'm going to focus on two 5 string shapes - A minor and A major - and so we'll learn the left hand notes, and then practice being able to play them with the left hand only, evenly and with timing, so we can then put it all together.
The way we want to work on this is by adding one string at a time. We'll go through A Minor, starting with the top two strings, descending only. This is a pretty conventional pull-off lick. Once you can play that evenly, we'll add the G string, then the D string, then all 5 strings descending.
Once you can do that, we'll follow the whole process ascending; and finally, we'll put it all together, ascending and descending, and play the whole shape, left hand only. As with the right hand, what's most important is playing every note evenly; build up to tempo only at the speed where you feel like you can hear each note evenly.
Lesson Info
