Yngwie Malmsteen Style Sweep Picking Pt.1


This lesson focuses on the sweep picking style of the great Yngwie Malmsteen.  His playing is known the world over for it's incredibly fast scale runs and sweep picked arpeggios. He completely changed the face of rock guitar when he came onto the music scene in the early 80's.

In this lesson we will focus on some of the arpeggio shapes that he uses to create his rapid arpeggio sequences. We will not only study WHAT they are but HOW to play them like he does.

In part two of this lesson series I will show you a little sweep picking etude in the style of Yngwie Malmsteen using these shapes.

If you have never done sweep picking before, the timing of both hands together may take a little getting used to. Make sure you watch the video enough times until you can mimic the right hand positioning. Pay particularly close attention to the right hand when I speed up the passages and try to imitate the very small amount of movement.

Here is the PDF TAB download for this lesson.

Yngwie Malmsteen Style Sweep Picking Lesson Part One PDF

Take your time and be patient with this one!!

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Yngwie Malmsteen Style Sweep Picking Pt. 1

11 Comments

  1. ian hall on January 4, 2010 at 7:18 am

    Do you have big hands!!!! That pull off from 12th to 7th is a big stretch for me

    Ian

    • Carl Brown on January 4, 2010 at 11:25 am

      LOL!! My hands aren’t really that big, it is more on how you hold the neck I think. Try and make sure your thumb is placed pretty low on the back on the neck, that will give you more of a reach. It is a large stretch though, so don’t feel like you have to be able to do it in a day. Thanks for watching!! The etude is coming today!!

  2. Roger lynch on January 1, 2011 at 3:08 pm

    Hi Carl,hope your holidayshave been well!! So I’m having a problem with sweeping,I can already sweep numerous ones and hit all notes and all but they sound kinda bad because I’m not good at muting the strings after I go over them!! Any helpful tips you can offer?

    • Carl Brown on January 1, 2011 at 11:10 pm

      Hey Roger, all of the muting of the strings is primarily done in two ways.

      First, as you sweep in a downward direction your right hand palm along your pinky muscle lays onto the strings you just left. So as you sweep across the strings the palm comes across with it silencing the strings. The other open strings that you haven’t made it to yet with the sweep should be muted by the bottom of you fret hand first finger.

      That is the basic idea. When you sweep in a upward direction just make sure to reverse everything, ie. the palm will mute any of the unwanted lower pitched strings and the bottom of the first finger will take care of the rest.

      Practice it slowly in the beginning so you can pay close attention to any extra noise. Then mute any of those noises by using one of those two muting methods. 🙂

      Good Luck!! Carl..

  3. Roger lynch on January 3, 2011 at 6:24 pm

    Thanks a lot Carl,I’ve been doing it for the past two days and it’s finally coming together!! I really appreciate it!! Hope to learn much more throughout 2011 from you!! Take care and thanks once again!!

  4. Anonymous on April 25, 2011 at 11:10 pm

    what is etude?

    • Carl Brown on April 27, 2011 at 11:50 pm

      It just means a little piece of music usually completely consisting of one type of technique in order to help you practice that technique without playing monotonous non-musical exercises. That is all. 🙂

  5. iLL on January 10, 2012 at 5:20 am

    Thanks for this wonderful tutorial sir.. i am learning alot of things from this one.. Again, thank you..

  6. Ruben III on January 26, 2012 at 3:07 am

    Sir, kindly help with my guitar playing. When i do fast lick, it sounds noisy. A lot of unused string are ringing. what advice can you put forth? thank you sir

    • Carl Brown on January 26, 2012 at 2:43 pm

      Hey Ruben, try my muting videos and my pick hand positioning for fast playing styles video as well. They should help you learn to control those unused strings. 🙂

      Cheers! Carl..

  7. Ruben III on January 26, 2012 at 3:16 am

    Sir, can you suggest a boss pedal to sound like yngwie?or like your tutorial .Thank you!

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