A good human friend of mine, Jim, heard me doing some sweeps at one of our recent shows and asked me for some tips. I figured that’s a great topic, worthy of answering in blog format with examples on our web site. Here’s a bit of a knowledge dump on sweeps and how they relate to Electric Mummy’s “10K Dead”. See the resources at the bottom of this blog for both a demo recording and a midi transcription.
Composing with sweeps
Sweeps are never random sequences of notes that happen to sound good together. They are based on a chord, sometimes with other notes for color. The three chords in 10K Dead are Bb Minor, C Major, and F Major.
For this passage I had the harmony/rhythm part already worked out. Then while I was away from the guitar and computer (both instant recipes for writer’s block), I sang to myself some musical ideas trying to imagine the most awesome guitar solo ever (of course!). After I had a few ideas, I hopped back onto the computer with my guitar in hand and figured out what the heck I was hearing in my head.
On sweep technique
Alright, most of you shredders out there own me when it comes to sweeps. But here’s my pointers on what I got to share technique-wise.
First on picking. Generally you want to do all down strokes, this is what makes it sweep technique instead of arpeggio technique. Assuming all the notes are on consecutive strings this will work out great. There are some variations, namely when more than one note is on a string. We’d have to do either a quick alternation, or a hammer-on/pull-off. In our case we are lucky, we are sweeping on the top four strings. And the final note of each sweep, you could say is part of the chord or arpeggio, but it’s really not part of the sweep since it’s a quarter note apart. Therefore we alternate the picking to grab the final note which accounts for our two notes on the 1st string. With me so far?
Second, it’s important to practice hearing each note of the sweep evenly. A good practice idea is to setup the metronome and play through the sweeps as if each note was written as an 8th note. I’ve heard humans say, you can’t play it fast till you can play it slow. Very, very true!
The third sweep in the series is high up on the neck which makes it very difficult to get all the notes at the same time. The suggestion here is to begin the sweep with the 3rd finger down on the 4th string. Then as the sweep progresses, lift the 3rd finger and slightly increase the pressure of the 1st finger bar towards the 1st string. I imagine this as creating a rocking motion with regards to where I’m applying pressure on the fretboard.
Another tip on these sweeps: Rhythmically we should be thinking about the destination point of each one. In these cases I’m thinking about the note on beat one. I’m less concerned on exactly when I start the sweep, but I know it needs to hit one beat one. This is something that I’m focusing on while I’m playing. That is, beat one should have a bit of an accent on it, whereas the first note of the sweep is not accented.
Another way to think about it, and I’m sure I’m over-explaining it by now, but I think of each sweep as a wave. When the wave is up, I begin the sweep. And as the wave flows down and reaches the bottom I end the sweep.
The sample recording
http://wiggio.com/yui/folder/stream_file.php?doc_key=mTX48ePS/Mrh+GZTmjaKxjUIPbD5cpo3H+ObNs5pvRA=
Here’s a quick sample I put together to show you my sweep picking in “10K Dead”. Some of the middle stuff didn’t make it into the final arrangement. So it’s not exactly what I perform these days.
The transcription
http://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/9e30bb764564e820d53ed17e1c6a8535cedba25d
I use Noteflight when I want to write out some musical ideas and share them with my mummy bandmates. The transcription is keen, but the midi is midi. Noteflight has a lot of flexibility for choosing instruments, staffs, and tools for creative rhythms and notation. Now if they would just allow me to do Drop-D tuning with the guitar tab I would give it a near perfect rating.
Notes on the transcription
The form of this instrumental section is A B C A B, where A is the sweeps, B is essentially a harmonization of the main rhythm, and C is a bit of a tribute to some Iron Maiden ideas. I love what Murray and Smith do, they influence many of my musical ideas. They are honorary Electric Mummies.
electricmummy on December 13th, 2010 | File Under Uncategorized | No Comments -
