Re: How is your sweep picking?
Hell, just for this thread, I recorded myself doing sweep picking (not uploading any clips though) just to see where I stand in this poll.
I figured you'd appreciate a more in depth response and for someone to be able to test out their technique, so thought why not?
It's a technique I honestly haven't bothered to sit down and practice properly in about 3 years now, and it really showed in the recordings.
I used a variety of tempos, from 100bpms to 150bpms using sixteenth note triplets and here were my findings :
At 100bpm I was able to to perform the standard 5 string major arpeggio shape pretty cleanly, as well as the standard 3 string major (which is just the top 3 strings of the 5 string shape anyway) and the standard 3 string minor arpeggio shape fairly cleanly.
Could also do some 3 string diminished shapes fairly cleanly. 5 string diminished stuff was pretty awful.
Couldn't do the 5 string minor arpeggio shape particularly well, but it wasn't the worst.
At 120bpm, could still do the 5 and 3 string major arpeggios, but the 3 string minor arpeggio started to fall apart a bit and the 3 string diminished patterns were noticeably more sloppy. Couldn't do 5 string diminished stuff at all.
At 150bpm, my ability to synchronize my hands together for any of the patterns broke down entirely. You'd be lucky to hear the first and last note of the 5 string major arpeggio pattern. Everything else in between was just string noise/just noise in general.
On a scale of "I'm amazing at it", probably being able to do all sorts of 6 string wizardy stuff moving from shape to shape with ease in a single run , perhaps with tapping bits in between,, to "I'm terrible at it" being not really being able to do it at all, I voted "I can do it, but not well".
I used to be able to do stuff like 3 octave, 6 string patterns with tapping in it (although not quite good to the point of being able to seamlessly move from shape to shape with 6 string arpeggio shapes), which took me a long time to get right, and well, my ability is now back down to almost near the beginnings of when I started to learn to sweep pick.
So, you're perhaps wondering why, even after getting to that level I did, I just stop practicing it.
Well, it wasn't a technique that came all that naturally to me.
Legato, on the other hand, came much more naturally, to the point where I spend only half the time practicing it compared to sweep picking, yet my legato technique made twice the progress as my sweep picking did,
I had no use for the technique (sweep picking) at all at that point (2008, when I stopped practicing it), and I just couldn't justify spending all that time practicing a technique I just wasn't using in any of the music I was playing.
Used to also be able to alternate pick at 240bpm in 16th notes back then too, but again, just had zero use for that.
I don't even really practice alternate picking anymore either, but I do use it in my playing so it hasn't deteriorated anywhere near as much as the sweep picking, but I just can't do it as fast as I used too, and can't do it with as complicated patterns anymore
