The place everyone should start. Three notes, one per string, on the top three strings — root, ♭3, 5 — raked down with a single motion and raked back up with another. There is no room to hide here: with only three notes the whole exercise is the rake itself and the fretting-hand roll between the strings. Get one clean triplet at a slow tempo before you even look at the five-string shapes.
Start at 50 BPM — far slower than you would drill alternate picking, because a sweep is only worth anything when each note stops before the next one starts. Play it one note per beat and listen for notes ringing into each other: that is the fretting hand failing to lift, not the pick. Raise the tempo about 4 BPM at a time only once a full pass sounds like an arpeggio rather than a chord. Press Play sweep to hear it and watch the rake cross the strings, or take the tempo to the metronome.
- Start with the 3-String Minor shape — three notes, one rake down and one back up. Do not touch the five-string shapes until this one is clean
- Pick a key, or move the root fret directly; the shape is movable, so one fingering covers all twelve keys
- Press "Play sweep" and watch the bar above the step strip: one unbroken bar is one unbroken pick motion, so the pick never lifts for the notes it spans
- Play along and let the pick fall through the strings in a single motion — it is one push, not several picks in a row. The strings do the separating, not the wrist
- Watch for the steps tagged "roll": that is the same finger moving off one string onto the next at the same fret. Press, release, press — if both notes ring together you get a chord, not an arpeggio
- Raise the tempo about 4 BPM at a time once a full pass sounds clean, or turn on Loop and let it repeat while you match it
About Sweep Picking Exercises
Guitar Tool Hub's free sweep picking exercise tool drills the technique that trips up more players than any other: one continuous pick motion raked across several strings, spelling an arpeggio one note at a time. Six movable shapes cover the ground — 3-string minor and major triads on the top strings, the classic 5-string minor and major shapes, a full 6-string minor sweep, and the symmetrical diminished 7th shape that repeats every three frets. Pick a shape and either choose a key or slide the root fret along the neck; the tool re-derives the fingering for whatever you are tuned to and only offers positions where the shape genuinely fits under one hand. Unlike the per-note arrows on the Alternate Picking Exercises tool, the step strip here draws one continuous bar over every unbroken pick motion — so you can see at a glance that five notes share a single downstroke rather than five separate ones. Every note that needs a fretting-hand roll is tagged, hammer-ons and pull-offs are marked separately from picked notes, and each shape reports how many strings its longest rake crosses and how many rolls it contains. Suggested starting tempos are deliberately slower than the other drills, because a sweep only works once each note stops before the next one starts. Where the Arpeggio Visualizer shows arpeggios spread across the whole neck, this drills sweeping through one shape at tempo.
- 016 sweep shapes: 3-string minor & major, 5-string minor & major, 6-string minor, diminished 7
- 02Continuous rake overlay — one bar per unbroken pick motion, not one arrow per note
- 03Fretting-hand roll points marked on every step that needs one
- 04Hammer-ons and pull-offs shown separately from picked notes
- 05Longest rake, roll count and fret span counted from the shape itself
- 06Movable shapes — pick a key or slide the root fret along the neck
- 07Only positions where the shape actually fits under one hand are offered
- 08Slow suggested starting tempos (40–52 BPM) built for hand-sync
- 09Adjustable tempo from 40–240 BPM
- 10Note-by-note playback highlighted on the fretboard and step strip
- 11Loop mode for continuous repetition
- 12Tap any note or step to hear it
- 1327 tunings · acoustic, electric & classical sounds
- 14One-tap hand-off to the Metronome at your practice tempo
- 15Free — no account needed
Frequently Asked Questions
Sweep picking is playing one note per string with a single continuous pick motion that falls through the strings, instead of picking each note separately. The pick behaves like it is strumming — one push down through five strings, one pull back up — but the fretting hand releases each note the instant the next one sounds, so what you hear is an arpeggio, not a chord. That fretting-hand job is the real technique; the pick motion itself is the easy half.
Start with a 3-string triad shape and nothing else. Three notes on the top three strings, raked down in one motion and back up in another, is the whole technique in miniature — and with only three notes there is nowhere to hide a note that rings over the next one. Play it at 50 BPM, one note per beat, until a full pass sounds like three separate notes. Only then move to the 5-string shapes, and expect to drop the tempo when you do.
Alternate picking gives every note its own stroke, strictly down-up-down-up, including through string changes. Sweep picking does the opposite: one stroke covers several notes, the pick never reverses mid-rake, and the notes are separated by the fretting hand instead. That is why this tool draws one continuous bar over the notes that share a stroke, where the Alternate Picking Exercises tool puts an arrow on every single note. Economy picking sits between the two — mostly alternate, but raking through string changes.
Because the fretting hand is not lifting. If a note keeps ringing after you have moved to the next string, two or three notes sound at once and the arpeggio collapses into a chord. The usual culprit is a roll — one finger covering the same fret on two adjacent strings, which has to press, release, and press again rather than barre. Every step in this tool that needs a roll is tagged, so you know exactly where to listen.
A roll is when the same finger plays the same fret on two or more adjacent strings, one after the other. You cannot barre it — a barre lets both notes ring together — so the finger has to roll from its tip onto its pad and back, releasing each string as it moves on. The 5-string major shape has two rolls in a row on the same finger, which is why it is harder than the minor version despite having the same number of notes.
Much slower than you would practise alternate picking — 40 to 52 BPM at one note per beat, and each shape here suggests a starting tempo. Sweeps fail at slow speeds in a way that is obvious and fixable, and hide their failures at fast speeds. If you cannot hear each note as a separate event at 45 BPM, playing it faster will not fix it. Raise the tempo about 4 BPM at a time once a whole pass is clean.
No, but it helps to know what you are playing. Every sweep shape here is an arpeggio — the chord tones of a major, minor, or diminished 7th chord laid out one per string — and the tool names the chord each shape spells at your chosen position. If you want to see how those chord tones spread across the whole neck rather than in one sweepable shape, the Arpeggio Visualizer covers that; this tool is about sweeping through them at tempo.
A clean 3-string sweep is a few weeks of short daily sessions for most players. The 5-string shapes, with their rolls and the hammer-on at the top, take a few months to get even, and getting them fast enough to use in a solo takes longer than that. The limiting factor is almost never pick speed — it is how reliably the fretting hand mutes what it has just left, and that improves only with slow, attentive repetition.
Because it is symmetrical. A diminished 7th arpeggio stacks four minor 3rds, so the identical shape repeats every three frets and any note in it can be treated as the root — which makes it the standard way to climb the neck quickly with one fingering. Musically it is a tension chord: it sits naturally over a dominant 7th or as a passing chord between two diatonic ones.
Yes — completely free. No account, no download, and no payment required. It runs entirely in your browser.