Guitar Sweep Picking Lessons

In our last series of guitar lessons we learned all the guitar arpeggios in the major scale, to help you add flash, speed, and quick string transitions to your solos.

Next in this series of electric guitar lessons, we’ll use arpeggios to learn a new picking technique called “guitar sweep picking”.

How to Play Guitar Arpeggios with Sweep Picking

Below you’ll see all the chords in the G major scale played in ascending order. Notice that the first four notes of each arpeggio are played with down strokes, and the next three are played with an upstroke.

Guitar Sweep Picking: Review

The sweep picking lessons taught here will help you add speed to your solos. This technique works great on arpeggios, but believe it or not, alternate picking (down-up-down-up) in all other situations will help you play faster. It is best to learn and practice both techniques as we applied them in these lessons.

You should now have control over the entire fingerboard of the guitar, especially if you applied these to other keys rather than just the ones we used as an example.

With the entire fingerboard at your disposal, you’ll be able to use the entire range of the guitar to help you express yourself from the deepest lows, to the highest highs.

Of course, we didn’t dive too deep into music theory, and we implore you to seek out and learn all you can. These how to play guitar series have given you a solid foundation and provided you with a good platform to expand your musical knowledge. Know that the forms and techniques we have supplied you with will serve you well throughout your music career.

Now, go forth and make music!