In this article Simon Barnard guides you through this useful tool for bringing arpeggios and larger interval phrases into your playing.

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Slash’s intro to Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns N’ Roses is built on string skips

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String skipping is a technique often required when phrases feature wide intervals that would prove too stretched if attempting to use only adjacent strings. Traditionally, melodic phrases have favoured small interval based lines using adjacent strings, moving fret by fret, string by string. This yields wonderfully musical results. However, string skipping allows us to create phrases with wider intervals that often sound more arresting. It also allows for fluid arpeggios to be performed without having to resort to sweep picking; an approach favoured by both Paul Gilbert and Nuno Bettencourt to emulate the fluidity of Yngwie Malmsteen’s sweeped arpeggios.