Rock Guitar Lick 29: Dorian Sweep Picking Lick 1

Welcome back to another fun-filled lesson that will help you to expand your dorian mode guitar soloing vocabulary! In this lesson we’ll be looking at an A Dorian lick that uses a lot of sweep picking. So if you’ve been meaning to work on your sweep picking technique, then you should find this lesson really helpful. 🙂

Let’s get things rolling now by checking out the lick…

Rock Guitar Lick 29: Dorian Sweep Picking Lick 1

Rock Guitar Lick 29: Dorian Sweep Picking Lick 1

To compose this lick I used three of the diatonic arpeggios that lie within the A Dorian mode. The first twelve notes of the lick are comprised of notes from an A Minor 9 arpeggio…

Amin9 Arpeggio

Although I’ve stuck to using only notes from this arpeggio, notice that I haven’t played the arpeggio in a straight up-and-down fashion. Instead, what I’ve done is used the arpeggio notes in a less predictable way. In my opinion, doing this helps to make the arpeggio sound less mechanical, and a lot more musical.

After the A Minor 9 arpeggio, you’ll then need to play a descending B Minor 7 arpeggio…

Bm7 Arpeggio

Once you’ve played this arpeggio, then you need to shift gears and play an E Minor Add 9 arpeggio…

Em Add9 Arpeggio

To make these arpeggios easier to see, here’s the TAB again with the arpeggios pointed out…

Rock Guitar Lick 29 Explained

From a technical perspective, this lick is fairly straightforward to play. (I’m assuming that you’re already comfortable with basic sweep picking technique). Although, some guitarists might find the numerous finger-rolls being used quite challenging to play cleanly. If this is the case with you, then the best course of action is to work on the finger-rolls in isolation. Once you can play them all cleanly, then you can get started with learning the whole lick.

Another thing to pay close attention to is the timing. The entire lick is played using sixteenth notes, so it’s really important to you play four evenly-spaced notes per click of your metronome.

Have fun!

Return To: Rock Guitar Licks