A guitar playing technique, in which a succession of notes on adjacent strings are plucked individually, but with a single up or down stroke. If only two notes are played on adjacent strings, it is better to use alternate picking. sweep picking a chord shape will result in an arpeggio. To sweep pick cleanly, it is necessary to mute the preceeding note by taking the fretting finger off the fretboard just as the following note is picked. If both the following and preceeding note are fretted with the same finger, it is simply a matter of "rolling" the finger up or down.