just venting

Take a deep breath, relax, and realize that no matter how long you have been playing or how good you are at certain techniques, learning something new always takes time and patience. It sounds to me like you are being too hard on yourself and then getting too upset to practice effectively.

Just take a step back for a moment, slow things down, and figure out what exactly about sweep picking that is giving you so much trouble. Pinpointing the problem will get you half-way to solving the problem!

Good luck! I know you'll get the technique down with a bit of hard work!

Other than Olive's great advice, maybe try holding your pick more towards the tips of your fingers. I find I hold my pick differently for different types of speeds/techniques.

If you play a lot of speed stuff, your pick might be lost in your fingers with only the tip being exposed (Theory = less resistance). But then again, you might be use to it and that is how you play.

Just a thought........

I asume you mean sweeping arpeggios n stuff. Its very hard to learn, you cant really do it in a short time. If you try and go too fast before your able to its gonna sound messy. Technique is so impotant here, the most important thing is that all the note are heard and dont ring into each other - The speed isnt the important bit, you cant get it at spped if you cant get it clearly at a slow pace. Dont hold an arpeggio shape like a chord.

As for the picking, try different pick sizes n thicknesses - It make a huge difference when sweeping. Dont be heavy on it, you gotta sweep with just the tip - The challenge at first is you find the sweep isnt smooth but disjointed like your pick is slowed down with each string. The only thing for that is practice.

Another thing about doing it with speed is that your fingers may not be in perfect sync with your pick so watch that

"tiiiiii-iii-iiii-iiimmmmmeeeee is on your side."

I was having the same problem I while back, and I eventually gave up on that because its not really a big part of my style. But don't be like me! I'm going to give that aspect of my playing another shot, but it takes time. I know exactly what you are going through. The advice on criticizing your individual playing style and movements couldn't be more correct; I find, for example, that if I raise my pick hand shoulder slightly, I can pick much more cleanly, but this is viewed as somewhat of a bad thing (technique-wise) in some circles. But it works for me, and I'm trying to use it to my advantage.

To contradict this, in my experience the "correct" way of doing things (ie the most efficient in the long run) is almost never the easy way in the short run. But it pays of if you put the time in. Thats why, even though I can pick cleanly by raising my shoulder now, I'm trying to slowly correct the problem in my practice sessions.

You'll find that its a matter of balance between technique and what feels good, with a lot of trail and error in between. Just keep pluggin at it.

oh yeah, if you have ?s about technique, you might want to as Tom (Noteboat) if you don't have a teacher around, he knows his stuff and has helped me with stuff like this on occassion.

Hope this helped! Have fun with it.
Matt