Sweep picking is the hardest, gnarliest, most impressive technique a man can do on a guitar. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent in my bedroom with my metronome at 54 bpm, patiently navigating my Ibanez Iceman’s fretboard, honing my skills. And according to all of my internet research, Timothée Chalamet barely knows more than cowboy chords so why in the FUCK is my girlfriend constantly watching TikTok videos of him in slow motion?
This anemic, pale little shit is hoarding all of her attention. It’s like she forgot that I have a Marshall half-stack in my bedroom.
What does he have that I don’t?! First of all, how pretentious of this punk-ass wiener to put an accented letter in his name. I have to look for the option key on my Mac every time I want to type his name into Twitter to find more insult fuel.
Sure, becoming “The Sweep Picking Sex-God” (your words, not mine) may have come at the expense of developing less useful skills like social graces, emotional intelligence, and financial security, but who is impressed by those? Not fans of Avenged Sevenfold, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Megadeth. Show me a sweep-picked lick from any of these titans and I’ll play it back as thousands of “meh”s reign down upon me from countless YouTube metal nerds, fore I am a king!
Yet to my girlfriend, this means nothing. I don’t get it. This scrawny kid fucks a peach and everyone trips over themselves calling it art, but when I do it my roommates yell “Close the door” and “I’m calling the cops!” What does he have that I don’t?
Since then I’ve played through John Petrucci’s Rock Discipline over four hundred times but nothing has changed. If anything she’s on her phone watching home more. Send help! And looper pedals!