How To Play Guitar Arpeggios Fast By Picking Them In Unusual & Creative Ways

Having killer sweep picking technique is one of the most coveted skills for rock and metal guitarists. However, you don’t take your sweep picking to the highest level by practicing in the exact same way every time.

 

Find ways to practice creatively helps you become a more adaptive and well-rounded guitarist. You play arpeggios at a higher level and practicing becomes more fun and engaging.

 

 

One of the most creative and rewarding ways to practice sweep picking arpeggios is to use variety in your picking approach. Instead of sweeping every note, you use different picking combinations to challenge yourself, overcome technical flaws and reach a new skill level.

 

 

Add these exercises into your practice schedule to play guitar arpeggios fast and clean like never before:

Exercise #1: Challenge Your Picking Technique To Make Arpeggios Easier

 

One of the biggest causes of sloppy guitar arpeggios is having your hands out of sync. A great way to lock them together is using only upstrokes or downstrokes to play an arpeggio. This slows down your picking hand, forcing you to stay in perfect sync to get the notes to sound correctly.

 

After doing this for just a few minutes, playing in sync using normal sweep picking technique feels MUCH easier.

 

Here is an A minor 7 arpeggio that is played using only upstrokes:

Short Sweep Picking Lick

Practice this both using upstrokes only and downstrokes only.

 

Exercise #2: Fix Problem Notes Using Crushing Power In Your Picking Hand

 

Sometimes sweep picking arpeggios are ruined by just one or two sloppy notes. Isolating these notes and focusing on them intensely is a great way to bring them up to par with the rest of the pattern.

 

Emphasizing a note with a heavily accented pick attack brings it to the center of your attention. This makes it easy to pick out flaws and adjust to correct them without slowing down.

 

Play this exotic-sounding chord while accenting the highlighted note with heavy picking power:

Short Sweep Picking Lick Example

After playing through this lick several times, rotate which note gets the accent. Do this until you’ve completed this process for every note in the arpeggio.

As you find flaws in your technique, take a moment to process them mentally. Then think about what you need to do to correct them and take action right there to correct your guitar playing mistakes at a fast speed.

 

Exercise #3: Take Your Sweep Picking To A New Level With Alternate Picked Arpeggios

 

Alternate picking is a great tool to use for challenging yourself to keep both hands in sync while playing an arpeggio. This takes a lot of mental energy and strengthens your normal sweep picking technique.

 

Alternate pick the 2-string arpeggios below:

Short Sweep Picking Lick Alternate Picking

After you are able to alternate pick these arpeggios without mistakes, add another string to each pattern to challenge yourself and improve your picking even more.

 

Exercise #4: Remove Mental Barriers To Better Sweep Picking With “Opposing” Picking Motion

 

Using only upstrokes or downstrokes is a great challenge, but this takes it to a new level to make your sweep picking even more tight.

 

The challenge here is to use upstrokes to play notes that are ascending (in pitch) and downstrokes to play notes that are descending. This helps you push your technique to a higher level by confusing your brain with opposing picking motion to what you would normal use while sweeping:

Exercise #5: Become More Creative With Sweep Picking Using Integration Practice

 

Adding arpeggios together with scales strengthens your ability to play creatively while soloing and helps you think of phrases that flow effortlessly from one musical idea to the next.

 

This video gives you a demonstration of how cool it sounds to combine arpeggios and scales:

The lick below uses an A minor arpeggio in first inversion combined with notes from an A minor scale to create a cool, flowing phrase:

Think of your own note rhythms for this phrase and come up with many variations to challenge your creativity.

 

However, don’t simply practice this one phrase.

 

Apply this concept whenever you learn new arpeggios and scales so you integrate all your guitar skills together. This is critical for making your guitar solos flow seamlessly and sound musically expressive.

 

Now you’ve learned many killer ideas to help you master sweep picking arpeggios. However, there’s more to learn. Learn how to become more musically expressive and creative with arpeggios by reading this sweep picking article.