Some Sweep Picking Patterns for the Whole Tone Scale
Playing around with the Whole-Tone scale today I came up with a few patterns that involve raking across groups of three strings and moving up or down the neck. I hadn't thought of playing the scale this way before so I thought I'd share them with you here.
Each pattern involves three ascending notes followed by three descending notes; the whole thing then repeats up (or down) two frets as many times as you like, since Whole-Tone scale fingerings all repeat in this way anyway. That makes the patterns easy to learn.
What's more, playing one note on the inner strings and two on the outer ones enables you to play them with a picking pattern that goes down-down-down-up-up-up and so on, which with practice can enable you to play very quickly. This is known as "sweep picking", and we'll have more on that technique in later lessons.
T--------5--3--------------7--5--------------9--7----------------11--9------------------------- |-----4--------4--------6--------6--------8--------8---------10---------10--------------------- A--2--------------6--4--------------8--6--------------10--8-----------------12----------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- B---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
T--11----------------7--9--------------5--7--------------3--5--------------1------------------- |------8---------10--------6--------8--------4--------6--------2--------4---------------------- A---------8--10---------------6--8--------------4--6--------------2--4------------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- B---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
T---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |--------5--3--------------7--5--------------9--7----------------11--9------------------------- A-----5--------3--------7--------5--------9--------7---------11---------9---------------------- |--2--------------6--4--------------8--6--------------10--8----------------12------------------ B---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This last one involves some stretching and ascends and descends very quickly because it moves by a major third (i.e., two whole tones) each time:
T---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |--------7--5--------------11--9-------------------7--9--------------3--5---------------------- B-----4--------6--------8---------10-----------10--------8--------6--------4------------------- |--3--------------9--7----------------13--\11---------------5--7--------------1----------------
Have fun with these patterns and try coming up with some of your own.
