Talk:Sweep-picking

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I removed the claim that Frank Gambale invented sweep picking, for starters those interested should read this page: http://www.frankgambale.com/pages/faq.html ...

In it Frank himself describes sweep picking as a technique of guitar that has been around "As long as guitar has been around" and then strangely enough claims that no one thought the technique was possible until he "came along". This latter statement not only contradicts his previous one on the same page, but obviously has no credence anyways, as Yngwie J. Malmsteen was recorded in early 80's on albums for both Steeler and Alcatrazz, wherein we can hear sweep picking, as well as Malmsteens solo career very shortly thereafter.

^Ritchie Blackmore used many sweeps,( possibly the first rock player to use them, before Yngwie), listen closely to some of the made in japan album... Highway star solo, child in time solo, strange kind of woman solo, and others, all in 1972 (after all, Blackmore influenced Yngwie)

To be specific, At the same time Frank Gambale was leaving his home to begin study at the Guitar Institute of Technology in 1982, Yngwie Malmsteen was being flown to North America by Mike Varney of Shrapnel Records in order to begin writing and recording for Steeler's self titled release in 1983. Seeing how this was done for the specific reason that Varney had heard demo's of Malmsteen playing in his native Sweden, then it stands to reason that logically Gambale could not of possibly invented a technique a year after someone who had already mastered it put it on a record.

To be fair, neither artist can adequately claim to have invented the technique, and any claims of the popularization is clearly subjective to one's preference for the artist, although one can sight Malmsteens official recordings as being well before Gambale's. In truth, sweep picking, like most techniques, was refined slowly over centuries of fretted instrument playing, making Gambale's original statement the most accurate of any standpoint. However, in light of his contributions, I will put Frank as one of the artists who popularized the technique in the 80's. Nightmare 18:51, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Whew. I did quite a lot of reworking on this article, after realizing two pages existed for it with this one hyphenating the term and the other did not, leading to two seperate pages about the same thing. Which tends to happen. There was also a very small third page essentially about the same thing that I merged called sweep-tapping. Of all three this easily had the most useful information so I stuck with it and merged the other ones into here. I also re-arranged the information and obviously deleted a lot of unecessary doubling of ideas. I also wrote a lot of this from scratch, which you can see from the history, but I give a salute to whoever wrote the last revision, there was lots of good info there that just needed to be organized.

Here's my problem, and you can see the remnants in the edit page, when i got through writing all this out it somehow formatted everything like a math equation. You know, long gray box? It seperated every paragraph into a one sentence long section that looked terrible. Oddly enough to my suprise, typing in a line break before each paragraph somehow overrides whatever is screwed up. I certainly didn't put code anywhere that would do that, none that I can see. After writing so long I'm going to leave it like it is for now. The only real downside is there's no paragraph indentions, which irks me but whatever. If someone finds out whats wrong and fixes it, tell me what it was!! Thanks!Nightmare 10:57, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

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"The fingers cannot hold down multiple strings at once nor can they make individual fretting actions, the motion is seen as a rolling of the fingers in the direction of the desired notes across the fretboard, rather than up or down the neck"

This bit is completely wrong. You can play some simpler sweeps like that, but how are you supposed to play expansive ones like that? Example - The common minor shape with the root on the A string requires the second finger fretting the third to jump over to the B string to hit the octave.

More complex progressions, like several sweeps in a row, require the fingers to be layed down shortly before the notes are played as there is not time to lay down all the fingers at once and it is not feasible when flowing in from another hand position.

Cheers --DanielCrouch 16:54, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

--- The bit about Frank Gambale being the originator is totally inaccurate and should be removed immediately. There is probably no clear answer to when it started to be used, but just to prove this theory wrong it is very well known that Manouche (Gypsy Jazz) guitarists such as Django Reinhardt have employed this technique since as early as the 1930's. Either someone should remove the history or find a credible source to explain it.Bryan s 06:04, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Contents 1 Sweep-tapping 2 OK 3 What does this sound like? 4 Jeff Loomis?

[edit] Sweep-tapping

Someone should include the less popular sweep-tapping technique. In this article, it is briefly mentioned, and I'm not even sure that it is the same thing that I am talking about. This technique is performed by sweep-picking up an arpeggio (or whatever, I like to use whole-tone shapes wich are very hard to arpeggiate, so I throw in a sixth or a fourth here and there), then tapping (with the right hand, obviously) on the next desired note, or possibly notes with the additional fingers. This allows for very wide arpeggios (or whatever, as stated before) and allows the player to go from a note to its second octave (15th note of the scale, not quite sure what the real name is) or higher, and back down again in a very short amount of time. The player can also transition very quickly into a tapping lick - and from a tapping lick back into sweep picking - seemlessly. This is a very fun and expansive technique that should not only be included here, but should be added to every guitarist's repetoire. Besides, is there anything that should not be explored when it comes to music? ---Kyle

[edit] OK

Pretty good article, a little dense, could use some graphics (animated gif maybe?) and some citations, but other than that it's pretty nice. Tagged it for not citing sources, though. I'll look around for some in a bit. Jongpil Yun 07:18, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What does this sound like?

I think a link to a WAV file that demostrates what this technique sounds like would help those of us who've never played the guitar understand what the article is talking about. 207.154.79.131 10:15, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. Also some examples of it's use in prominent songs. I'd record myself but I don't have any recording stuff. Anyone feel like giving it a go? 24.16.187.179 06:58, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jeff Loomis?

I think Jeff Loomis from Nevermore is one of the best sweep pickers around... why are people deleting him?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.169.210.150 (talk) 03:54, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

It's list crufting. The list has more than enough examples. It doesn't need to list every guitarist that uses the technique. That is just overkill. It doesn't need anymore names. 156.34.221.33 (talk) 04:04, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

for that matter, why is paul gilbert even on here? he never sweep picks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.193.156.228 (talk) 05:37, 26 May 2008 (UTC)