Ultimate Shred Machine: Sweeping Fundamentals & Exercises

1. USM Section 4: Introduction : Hi guys, Chris soup here and I'm really excited to launch my next course, all about sweeping. In this course, we'll be looking at the fundamentals of nailing that gliding motion, as well as things like risk flicking, enhancing chronicity. We'll be talking about exercises that combine sweeps with shredding. And we'll also be talking about ways to deal with rolling flat fingers sweeps. So get excited guys, pick up that guitar, and let's get swiping. 2. USM Section 4A: Sweep Gliding Motion + Ex 1-3: Okay guys, so the last section of this course we're going to devote solely to the sweeping arpeggio taking it. So what this is essentially going to be is a different way to play through arpeggios. You might find some different techniques with pentatonics as well. But essentially what we're gonna be doing is instead of changing multiple directions when thinking through, say, an arpeggio, that's the most common time to use it. Or doing a lot of quick down strokes. We're gonna be working through gliding motion. I'm going to show you what sweeping looks like. Okay, so sweeping is actually just as complicated as it looks. It is a rather complex technique. What we're gonna do to start off, to keep it simple, we're just going to be concentrating on the gliding motion and how to do it, the swipe technique in both directions. Okay, So as I mentioned earlier, the sweep technique is based on gliding motion. So one thing you'll notice is that when I'm doing the alternate picking, it does take longer. If I do a lot of down picks, that is a lot less efficient. So what we're trying to do if we're going to just keep it really, really simple. It's just pushed through the strings all in one direction. So the first thing to practice, even before we get our left hand or a fretting hand involved, is just to practice starting on one string, pushing through and then resting on the next. It's quite simple. So as soon as we finish one string resting on the next and you keep going to work that through. We'll go through some shapes throughout the course. But if we've got something like this, or even just two strings, we can practice that technique very, very slowly. Just by working through that arpeggio and pushes through the strings to rest on the next one. So one thing you'll notice is that I'm not doing this weird twist the risks then you'll see some noobs drinking their guitars and distortion and doing this risk twisting thing. Don't do that. The main thing that we wanna do is keep our wrist straight. And you'll notice that the angle of what my pick is doing is essentially not changing because what I'm doing, sorry, microphone stand. What I'm doing is pushing through the strings. That's all going on the same angle. Most of that is actually happening from my elbow. So what I'm thinking about as I do that, it's like I'm punching myself in the leg. And then when I run a reverse it, I turn the direction that I'm picking around and then pull up like I'm starting a lawn mower. I'm punching myself in the knee and starting the lawn mower. Over the first few exercises, we just want to concentrate on that pushing through the strings gliding technique. And just as far as the directions go, on, our essence, we're gonna be punching ourselves in the leg. And on the descends. We're gonna be pulling up like with starting a lawn mower. In the next part of this course, we're gonna be going through some simple exercises that we'll deal with, the gliding motion and the ascending and descending motion that punching yourself in the knee and lawn mower idea. And we're gonna be keeping that to toString and tracing arpeggios. And for starters, the exercises are gonna be all in one direction or the other, so don't get too scared. Let's dive right in. Let's begin the sweet parting of this course by only practicing the downward gliding motion. This exercise uses an ascending toString diatonic arpeggio sequence in the key of E major, pay close attention to the picking direction and the hammer on emphasis. We're now going to take the E major toString diatonic arpeggio sequence seen in figure 4.1, and use three string arpeggios instead. These are far more commonly used for sweeping them to string sweeps, once again, pay close attention to the picking direction and hammer on emphasis. The next exercise uses descending arpeggios in the key of D harmonic minor. You'll notice that each arpeggio starts on a down pick and pull off, then is picked for the next two notes of the arpeggio. After the down pick, you will need to slightly adjust the angle of your pig to suit and upwards glad sweep motion. Pay close attention to the picking directions and try to keep your gliding motion slow, inaccurate. 3. USM Section 4B: The British Cup Of Tea Flick & Hand Synchronicity + Ex 4-14: Alright, so in the next section of the course, we're gonna be talking about the British cup of tea movement that I do when I'm doing swiping. So you're probably wondering, what is this British cup of teeth increases talking about, well essentially we're gonna be talking about how to sync up our hands when we're doing the incentive is swipe the hammer on, pull off, and then how to get the descend. Let's talk about this with the close-up and with a bit more detail. Okay, so let's talk about this British cup of tea movement. So I'm going to do really, really slow sweep. And one thing you'll notice at the bottom that I have three nights I've got to hammer on, pull off. So if you look at my right hand raised, when I've got those three nodes, my right hand is doing nothing. I kinda have to waste time. Otherwise, if I turn around to quickly, this hand hasn't finished doing its hammer on, pull off thing and my hands won't sync up together. So what I do at the bottom, wait for that hammer on to finish, and I flipped my hand out. What this does is it gives me a chance to turn around my picking direction and then get ready for the back sweep. The cool thing about this British cup of tea thing is that it allows us to do a really gentle glide through the strings. And when I'm doing that, I'm not wasting my hands like that. Pushing through the strings. I'm punching myself in the knee leg and then on the hammer on pull off, I do my British cup of tea. And then I'm pulling up like I'm starting a lawn mower. So I've got punching myself in the leg. But it's coupled to turn around. And then I pull off like a star the lawn mower. You notice that when I do that way, it's just enough time for me to turn around so that I'm not pulling back too fast on my picking hand. And that my arpeggio hand isn't out of sync with that. We can also do it in a context like this. There's a very simple, a minor arpeggio, but I've got to hammer on at the start. Now if I do this, if I haven't finished the hammer on and I start swiping through, it sounds terrible because my hands on in sync. So when I do something like this, the start, I'm actually doing a little flick out there as well. So I'm going like this without the left hand. With your left hand now. Got a British cup of tea thing at the start. Now if I do it all together, I'm going to have a little one at the start and then I've got a hammer on and the first string before the turnaround. So it's all about giving your hands time to sync up and getting your picking hand ready to also do the descending part of the sweep as well. Okay, so the next couple of exercises in the course, we're going to relate to this British cup of tea movement. The main thing that I want you guys to focus on is the slow glide on the ascend, waiting for that hammer on, pull off to finish doing that little British cup of tea. And then pulling up with that lawnmower motion that we talked about. So take your time with this. Once you have it in your arsenal, you'll be able to swipe through arpeggios with maximum ease whenever it comes up. So anyway, without further ado, let's have a look at these exercises. In the next exercise, we'll be applying both directions of ascending and descending gliding motions to a simple five strings, c major arpeggio, pay close attention to the picking direction in the diagram and the hammer on and pull off emphasis. In the next exercise, we're going to join a few five string arpeggios together to create the diatonic chord sequence in the key of D-major will be ascending through one arpeggio, then using a slide transition into a descendant of another. The next weeping exercise we'll look at is a little bit strange as we'll be looking at suspended second arpeggios and will be drifting that shape up and down the fretboard. The chord progression we'll use is G sas to a shops us to G sharps us to basis to a basis to CSS2. A shops us to n d shops us to. In the next exercise, we'll be looking at a simple five string, a minor arpeggio that a sentence and the sentence, but has two strings that have to have it notes on it. Pay close attention to the hammer on emphasis and picking direction. The next exercise drifts between D natural and harmonic minor scales. And we'll use similar shapes and hammer on and pull off principles as the a minor arpeggio we saw in figure 4.7. It will also use major, minor, and diminished arpeggio shapes that will join together to create a melodic progression. Pay close attention to the heroines pull offs and the slides that we'll be using to transition from one arpeggio to another. In the next part of this course, we'll be looking at seventh arpeggios. These bad boys have three strings with tonight hammers on them, which means that even further problems can occur with hand synchronicity. Let's start with a five string C major seventh arpeggio. Pay close attention to the picking direction and the placement of the hammer on and pull offs. Once the same major seventh arpeggio saint in figure 4.9 starts to feel natural. We can join several seventh arpeggios together. The next exercise will involve every chord in C major diatonic chord progression, but every code will have a seventh, will be dealing with major seventh, minor seventh, dominant seventh, and minus seven flat five arpeggios. The next exercise is made up of 6 seventh arpeggios using diatonic chords from the key of G-Major. Pay close attention to the multiple hemorrhoids and slides and be sure to add sweep glides when you need to. In the next exercise, we'll take one arpeggio, but build through it gradually in mini three string sweeps. Let's take a look at a multiple position, G-sharp diminished arpeggio with an ascending and descending build. In the next exercise, we're going to take the principles from figure 4.12 and use them over a chord progression in C Major using building seventh arpeggios, the chord progression is C major seven, minor seven, G dominant seven, and minus seven. The next exercise uses multiple three string arpeggios from the sixth string to the third string. This will get you more used to the kinds of arpeggios, shapes you'll see in the base and low mid register. 4. USM Section 4C: The Dreaded Flat Finger Roll + Ex 15-18: Some of the arpeggios you're going to come across will have flat fingers in them. And it is very difficult because we need to roll through the notes without them sustaining and blending into each other. Let's have a close up and talk about this in a bit more detail. Okay, so let's talk about this flat fingered rolling arpeggio idea. Let's say I've got something like this. Just a flat fingered kind of a minor thing. Now, a lot of what I'm doing there is my right hand, my picking hand. I'm resting a lot of my flesh on the string. So if I take away that threading, sorry, that meeting hand, check this out. That's like I'm playing a terrible cord and all of those notes are bleeding together. But if I'm really, really diligent, you'll notice that none of the notes played together. So that's one way to deal with these shorter flat finger arpeggio. A tiny bit of rolling. Most of it's coming from my right hand. But when I've got a larger arpeggio like this, Let's say I've got something in G-Major. When I'm doing this. What I'm doing with that rolling flat finger. I'm not just trying to go from the tip of my finger and roll that. I actually noticed that my elbow comes up a little bit in my elbow goes towards the back wall. So it's easy to be rolling your arm back and forward from your elbow, then trying to roll your whole wrist? I think of it as elbow towards the back wall. And then when I'm coming up, I'm doing a street fighter rap account. So let's do that really slowly. Going towards the back wall, the descending arpeggio, upper cutting through. Let us that a lot of it's coming from my elbow, not from my wrist rolling. So those are the two ways that I'd want you guys to deal with. The short sweet, a little bit of rolling but a lot of palm control. And then on the biggest waves when we're rolling that we want to be bringing the elbow to the back wall and upper cutting up. Otherwise we get this. We want to be avoiding the sustain there. So we're gonna get more out of the elbow then just rolling the wrist. Enjoy that. So the next couple of exercises in the course are going to relate to the rolling flat finger idea. We just want to focus on using that palm mute technique, rolling our hand, wrist and elbow together. And the other thing we really want to focus on is not letting the notes bleed into one another or sustain. So without further ado, let's have a look at these rolling arpeggio exercises. The next exercise, we'll look at an ascending and descending sixth string, a minor arpeggio. There are two flat fingers within the arpeggio, and both will require a role. In the next exercise will be stringing together a few major and minor sixth string arpeggios using a basic chord progression in the key of G major. The next exercise, we'll look at a three string arpeggio sequence using flat fingers shapes on all of the arpeggios. In this sequence, the chord progression consists of a minor, C major, D minor, E diminished seven, and B diminished seven. The pointer finger is flat on at least two strings throughout this whole exercise. And we'll want to keep up the flat finger rolls and elbow technique. The next sweeping exercise is the most extreme in the course so far, it will require excellent hand synchronicity, as well as movements of the flat fingers rolling technique. It drifts between multiple inversions of 56 string major and minor arpeggios using a diatonic chord sequence in G major. All right. 5. USM Section 4D: Combining Sweeps And Shred + Ex 19-23: Okay, so in the next section of the course, we're going to be combining swiping with shredding. So most of the time this is gonna be an ascending sweep into a descending diatonic or pentatonic run. Let's take a close up and talk about this in a little bit more detail. Okay, so let's talk about combining this scraping and shredding technique. Let's take something really simple like this inversion of an, a minor arpeggio. So what I can do is I can combine that with position one of the a minor pentatonic. So it's got a cool Sandra, what it's infinitely more interesting than just doing that descending wrong, I think is really cool. So that would be a pentatonic contexts. We could use it in a diatonic contexts like this. I could use a basic, a minor arpeggio like that, just to three string. And then I could work into something like this. A little bit more interesting than straight linear diatonic patterns as well. So that's a cool way to do it with diatonic scales. You can take it even further. Do something like that. There's really no limit to what you can do with it. It's just about having an interesting entry to what you're working with. And another one that I like to do is you can combine a sweep with something chromatic if you're doing something diminished. So that's a really, really cool way to get sort of a fluid sound with your swipe and get a really separated staccato sound with the shredding as well. So it can be used in pentatonic, diatonic, and chromatic contexts. There isn't really a limit to what you can do with this concept. It's really about creating an interesting entry to an otherwise dull linear pattern. Or even if it's an interesting pattern, is just a cool way to get into it. Okay, So now that we've talked about that concept, we're gonna be looking at a couple of exercises that work on this ascending sweep into descending diatonic shredding run, which is gonna be, of course, combining the gliding technique with the alternate picking technique is a little bit scary, but it is a very, very useful and cool tool to have in your arsenal. Anyway, let's have a look at some of these exercises. In the next exercise, we'll use three strings, seventh arpeggios in the key of a minor, then drifts into a small descending diatonic run. This exercise has some similar shapes and positions seen in the Zephyr song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The next exercise uses similar principles to what we saw in figure 4.18, but this time we'll be using an ascending five strings sweep arpeggios into a lengthier descending diatonic pattern at the bottom. The next exercise uses toString arpeggios similar to the shapes we saw in figure 4.1. But Plato, the three octaves and covering all six strings, it will also descend through the diatonic scales in the key of a minor or G-Major. The next exercise combines three string, descending and ascending diminished sweeps with chromatic shredding. This is an excellent way to start practicing blending swipes and trading techniques at the same time. The final exercise uses five string sweep arpeggio triads, but also includes descending diatonic scale runs. This kind of idea has been used by Alex garlic many times. It's a great concept to create a more exciting and melodically colorful entry into a diatonic Ronald lick. 6. USM Section 4E: Secrets Of A Janitor & Farewell: Thank you guys for joining me for this course. I know it has been a mammoth undertaking and I'm really proud of all of you if you've managed to get to the end. In the sweep section of this course, we covered the gliding motion. We talked about that little British cup of tea. We talked about the hammer on and pull off synchronicity. We talked about flat finger sweeps. We talked about combining sweeps with shreds as well. We covered a lot of basis. So now that we've got all of those under our belt and we can continue working on those. You should be quite set up with suite techniques for a long time to come. That being said, we don't want to overuse the sweep technique. There is a point where we can't all be Jason Richardson's or Jason Becker's. All of the Jason's. But like I said in the previous sections, you can either blended in with the other techniques and make yourself a well-rounded play out. Or if it's a sound that you really, really enjoy going nuts with it, please don't feel like everything I say is gospel. Your opinion and what music speaks to you is really, really important to you as a player and an artist. So that's a really, really important thing as well. So now that we've got swiping, shredding, tapping, legato, we can blend those together. And hopefully you are all ultimate shred machines now.