Hey – check out this lesson on combining hammer ons, sweep picking and tapping, from an awesome blog I read called “i heart guitar”.
This is great stuff because by practicing licks like this you can stop using advanced techniques like sweep picking and tapping as a “trick”, and start using them a seamless part of your playing. I often see guys play a solo with some noodling in the pentatonic box. Then they’ll pause, do a couple of sweeps, pause again and finish off with some tapping licks. Which isn’t a bad place to start when you’re new to doing these things, but it’s way cooler to be able to move in and out of these techniques without interrupting the phrase you’re playing. Then you can start thinking of sweeping or tapping as just another thing you can throw in whenever the music calls for it/you happen to feel like it.
Here I’ve taken the lick from “i heart guitar” and added a bar to it, just to demonstrate what i mean by being able to move in and out of the techniques. It’s just a basic blues lick ending on a double stop. It’s not the only thing you could move into on a second bar, there are about a million things you could do. This is just one of them. If you’re at a stage with your playing where you’re starting to look at sweeping and tapping, then check out the lesson on i heart guitar. Then once you get it down, have a go at making your own endings to the lick. Have fun with it.
