Twilight clicked through her recording software's settings. She held her ESP six-string in one hoof while managing her computer through the other. After a couple minutes, she was ready to turn on her webcam. Everything seemed to be running smoothly.
"Hey, guys. I decided to record this for Rainbow Dash. She asked me about my shredding technique recently. Some of you might know I don't just stick to traditional speed stuff. I like to mix it up every now and again. A few weeks ago, I was practicing my sweep picking. I'm still fairly new to it, so I was bound to slip up sooner or later. What happened was, I forgot to press down on the fifth fret and played a natural harmonic instead. When I realized I hadn't even considered the potential of natural harmonics in shred music, I had an idea. I placed my fretting hoof over the bottom three strings without applying any pressure and strummed down in one singular motion, just like with traditional sweeping. I found out the harmonics muted themselves when I moved to the next string. It opened up a new way for me to practice sweeping where I could focus on perfecting my strumming and hoof muting without being preoccupied by fret muting. I'll show you guys a three-string example."
Twilight placed her fretting hoof over the fifth fret again. She quickly glided over the bottom three strings.
"You hear it? The harmonics are already pre-muted when you move between strings. I haven't seen a name for this style of playing yet, so for now, I'm calling it harmony sweeping. You can also call it harmony gliding if you want. What's interesting and kind of cool about this technique is that it's extremely easy to execute compared to regular sweeping. It's so simple you could teach it to a toddler. The example I showed wasn't very interesting on its own, but you can combine it with any other set of harmonics around the guitar."
Twilight played a two-string harmonic sweep on the fifth fret, then followed up with a three-string sweep on the seventh fret.
"Once you get that down, you can mix it with all sorts of other techniques like pinch harmonics for a sound that alternates between extremely melodic and super chuggy."
The mare played a few harmonic sweeps before ending with a pinch harmonic on the fifth fret.
"If you really want to go all out, you can blend harmonic sweeps with regular sweeping, pinch harmonics, and tapping for some seriously mind-bending arpeggios. Since I'm in drop D tuning anyway, I'll play a D major arpeggio using these techniques."
Twilight began with a traditional sweep. It was clear she still wasn't very experienced, but she made her best effort. She switched to a triple pinch bend and finished her example by alternating between harmonic sweeps and taps.
"I'm actually going to tune down a step to drop C. This is one of my favorite ways to practice sweeping."
Twilight adjusted each peg, testing the strings to make sure they were properly set. She opened a browser tab on her computer.
"I've been on a bit of a deftones kick lately. Their song 'Change' is really basic by itself, but if you add another guitar layer on top of it, you can create a whole other dimension for it. It sounds really killer. The chorus in particular offers plenty of opportunities to improvise."
Twilight skipped to the beginning of the chorus. She played a C minor arpeggio until the middle, then changed over to progressive pinch harmonics. Near the end, she played two separate, moderately-paced harmonic sweeps back and forth. Somehow, they added an extra level of darkness to the track.
"Because of how difficult normal sweep picking is, a lot of guitarists tend to ignore it entirely, but when you use it in genres that aren't known for their shred techniques, you can create some really interesting effects. Imagine if, say, 7 Angels 7 Plagues had used sweeping and mixed it with the other techniques I demonstrated. They were already a phenomenal band without them, but using them could have made them into one of the most revered metalcore bands in the world. With how bad of a reputation the genre's gotten in the last decade, it'll probably take some seriously technical and creative stuff to mend the damage. On the plus side, with the internet becoming the force that it has, musicians can learn most if not all of the techniques needed to play whatever they want. Anyway, that's about all I have to say for this lesson. I might do more in the future if I find some new ways to play. For now, I'm gonna' slow down a bit and play along to some deftones."
Starting from the first track on Deftones' self-titled album, Twilight strummed along. She found the sludgy tempo and deep tone to be a nice change. She figured if she wanted to speed up, she could play more arpeggios later.
Twilight showed Rainbow the video a few days later. The pegasus was impressed by how fast her friend's technical skills were improving.
"I had no clue you could use natural harmonics like that."
"I forgot to include a six-string harmonic sweep, but I think I got the point across without it."
"Definitely. Hard to believe something that easy could open up so many possibilities."
"My guitar doesn't have a whammy bar, so I had to make up for it with manual vibrato. Trying to play stuff like Therion and Malevolent Creation without it during the solos is a pain."
"In my opinion, pulling it off without one is far more impressive. You've already gone into advanced techniques anyway, may as well step it up by reinventing classics to be more challenging. If you mix all the other stuff you showed off with vibrato, you could potentially pull off even more crazy stuff like vibrato sweeping."
"You mean bending and sweeping simultaneously? Are you trying to kill me, woman?"
"No point in doing something if you can't go out of control with it every once in a while."
"You're mental, you know that?"
"Whatever gave you that idea?"
"Ugh. I have a headache..."