Chicken picking is a lead guitar

Lead guitar

Lead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure...

 picking

Guitar picking

Guitar picking is a collection of techniques for setting a string into motion to produce an audible note; that is, plucking or strumming the strings on a guitar. Picking can be done:-* With a plectrum held in the hand...

 style or technique used in country

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

, rock

Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

,and metal music where the plucked strings are pulled outward (i.e., away from the fretboard instead of parallel to the fretboard) by the fingers of the right hand and the note

Note

In music, the term note has two primary meanings:#A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#A pitched sound itself....

 played immediately dampened

Damping

In physics, damping is any effect that tends to reduce the amplitude of oscillations in an oscillatory system, particularly the harmonic oscillator.In mechanics, friction is one such damping effect...

 by increasing the pressure of the left hand's finger on the fret

Fret

A fret is a raised portion on the neck of a stringed instrument, that extends generally across the full width of the neck. On most modern western instruments, frets are metal strips inserted into the fingerboard...

. (Burrows 1995, p.60)

For example, the following, with a bend between the grace

Grace note

A grace note is a kind of music notation used to denote several kinds of musical ornaments. When occurring by itself, a single grace note normally indicates the intention of either an appoggiatura or an acciaccatura...

 and last notes (ibid):
Chicken picking is also used (incorrectly) as a synonym for Travis picking and hybrid picking

Hybrid picking

Hybrid picking is a guitar-playing technique that involves picking with a pick and one or more fingers alternately or simultaneously. Hybrid picking allows guitar players who use a pick to perform music which would normally require fingerstyle playing. It also facilitates wide string leaps Hybrid...

. Chicken picking, however, refers to this particular rhythm sequence while Travis picking is an alternating bass combined with finger picking. Hybrid picking refers only to the use of a plectrum combined with fingers as exemplified by Roy Buchanan

Roy Buchanan

Roy Buchanan was an American guitarist and blues musician. A pioneer of the Telecaster sound, Buchanan was a sideman and solo artist, with two gold albums early in his career, and two later solo albums that made it on to the Billboard chart. Despite never having achieved stardom, he is still...

 or Danny Gatton

Danny Gatton

Danny Gatton was an American guitarist who fused rockabilly, jazz, and country styles to create his own distinctive style of playing. A biography, Unfinished Business: The Life and Times of Danny Gatton by Ralph Heibutzki, was published in 2003. It has a voluminous discography...

.

Source

• Burrows, Terry (1995). Play Metal Guitar. Dorling Kindersley Limited, London. ISBN 0-7894-0190-8.