I’m have a bit stumbling block trying to teach myself sweep arpeggios on my electric. I find that when I lift my finger the string rings when I don’t want it to. I tried to “selectively” palm mute, but that ends up muffling the next string/note in the arpeggio. Basically, what do you do to make them sound clean without screwing up the rest?
Anyone?
I’ll give you a bump.
It would be much easier to demonstrate than describe, and I don’t have a guitar with me to analyse what exactly I do but anyway. . .
Technique one - use an arpeggio shape where you use a different finger (and fret) for each note, as each finger lifts off it automatically mutes the string as the next finger goes down. You might be lifting off higher than you need to.
Sweeping pretty much always involves some hammering on as well and that helps separate the notes cleanly.
Two - when playing consequtive notes on the same fret you sort of roll your finger across the fretboard, this work OK for me across two strings, three not so well.
Three (I think this is a Paul Gilbert trick) find a shape that skips strings. Pick/hammer on on the A string skip to the G string for the next two note and then to the E string, not really sweeping I suppose but it’s a way to go fast with wide intervals.
This will help a lot. I do find myself “overacting” the hand movement and that tends to pluck the string. I’ll work on that a bit.
The other tips make sense. I really appreciate it. If anyone else has anything to add, please let me know!
This girl, besides being really cute, has increadible technique. I understand sweeps much better than I can actually pull them off so here’s a decent depiction.
Wow - she IS cute and DOES have great technique. Whoa.
I am not a fan of or even remotely good at sweeping. At best I play slow leads and try to convince myself that it is because I value taste over speed, but that is just my way of rationalizing.
But although I am not a shredder, I can say this - if you have extraneous string noise due to moving your right/muting hand, you might consider getting a noise gate/suppressor. I have a Boss NS-2 I think - it is called a Noise Suppressor, not a gate. What I find is that if I set the Threshold about halfway-dialed-up, I get the gating when I am not strumming, but also, when I palm mute, a lot of the extra squeaks and squawks don’t sound while I am playing. Very helpful.
This is no excuse for sloppy technique, but it sure helps when I am 2 sets into a gig and getting passed too many shots of JD…
<Finger snap> The noise gate! One of the key pieces of equiptment when playing anything with really high gain / overdrive / distortion. It really sharpens the attack and kills background noise. Good call **WordMan **. Every electric player needs to have one in his arsenal.
Just make sure you set the threshold high enough if you’re playing live or the drums can cause the gate to open and some really freaky noises to come up, like the crazy squeels on the Pantera track “Good Friends and a Bottle of Pills”.
Noise gate huh? Very interesting. I’ll have to make a trip to Guitar Center. Any recommendations?
I can’t check out the youtube link until I get home, but the thought of a cutie shredding on guitar is causing me to reconsider my porn choices. 
Are you a pedal guy or a rack mount guy?
ETA: Either way, make sure that you don’t run any other effects after the gate, make it one of the first in the loop or you can also get weird noises coming when the gate opens and closes over say a delay pedal or an envelope filter.
Actually, I don’t use any pedals now, but the Boss noise pedal looks cool. I used to have a digitech whammy-wah, but I lost the power supply for it and now it’s collecting dust. 
Get thee to a Radio Shack and get one of those universal power supplies. They’re much cheaper than the things you’d get a Guitar Center.
What kind of guitar do you play? Does it have active pickups?
I peeped the youtube clip. Very impressive. The guitar playing is quite good too. 
I tried the Universal power supply thing. Doesn’t work for some reason. Causes it to just produce static.
My guitar is a Carvin sc90. (In fact, it looks almost exaclty like the one on top of that page). It’s a workhorse. No active pictups, but plays sick. Currently playing out of a Carvin MTS 3200. It goes to 11.
Wow, sexy axe. I’ve never actually seen one of those in person, but with that amp and that neck and pickup combo you should be totally ready. Try out the noise gate and see if that’s what it was.
That’s the one I have. Best of luck.