Thumb Sweeping

[Metaldood19]

Hey folks! I just recently became a part of a technical death metal band and was wondering if anyone has experience with thumb sweeping. There are quite a few parts in some of the songs that I would love to add a bit of technical flavor too. I have very very minimal experience with this (mainly just tooling around when I'm bored) and would love to know if anyone could throw me some pointers. Thanks again!

[Clef_de_fa]

I still to work on it but what I do is :
( on a 6 strings )

12 on the A
10 on the D
10 on the G
9 and 12 on the C

in one motion with the thumb, the muting comes when you lift-off your finger after each note being played.

to get the movement right I used a pick at first then I just practice with the thumb and index ( if you want to go both ways )

[Trauts]

I wrote a lesson on it (for 4-string) on Activebass years ago which might help get you started. The first one gives you some basic shapes and examples while explaining the basic technique

http://www.activebass.com/l22849--Bass-Sweeping

The second one is quite poor! (I was pretty young when I wrote these!) But the first and 5th examples might give some additional ideas.

http://www.activebass.com/l23618--Ap...s-For-Sweeping

The basic arpeggio shapes are all pretty useful to get under your fingers, but most of the tech. metal guys who use it base it on sweeping various diminished shapes, so might be worth playing around with the diminished scale to see what sits nicely under your fingers.

People I watched to get an idea include these

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAvrgkNRkqE
http://www.youtube.com/user/franckbass
http://www.youtube.com/user/CannibalisticZombie

Hope that helps!

[Metaldood19]

Thank you so much!!! You rule . (Also CZ is a rad dude. I love watching his videos)

[Metaldood19]

YES! I have the foundations of it down. Just need to build up speed now . This is why I love this forum