It Doesn’t Take Long to Be an Awesome Guitar Player

In his 15 years playing the guitar, Marco Dela Torre had not figured out how to master sweep picking.

The 30-something from Jakarta, Indonesia, thus decided to put himself to the task, and took up a 100-day challenge via GiveIt100.com to learn the highly technical move mostly used when playing metal music. By day, Dela Torre worked as a web designer for an ad agency; by night, he was a rocker at heart. A hundred days after beginning his experiment, Dela Torre sounded like a rock star.

"I went from learning the basic chord shape and figuring out where the fingers would go, to speed training and playing along with the metronome," Dela Torre tells the Good News Blog.

The musician began his challenge over the Christmas holiday, which proved difficult as he lost a few days to festivities and got thrown off schedule temporarily. Once back on track, he started to learn the technique by following basic YouTube tutorials, a typical route for many of those partaking in such social media dares, and used his desire to play real music as motivation. Sweep picking requires the guitarist to combine a sweeping motion with the pick with a matching fret hand technique. This produces a series of fluid, uptempo notes.

"At times it did feel monotonous," he explains. "I wanted to play an actual piece… There's a song I was working towards called 'My Will Be Done.'"

The guitarist's endeavor is just the latest in a growing online community taking up GiveIt100.com's charge to do something you've always wanted to do over a period of a 100 days. So far, we've watched a paralyzed woman learn to walk, a 23-year-old learn to dance, and a scrawny college kid master the art of push-ups. The purpose of the forum is to complete a goal with the Internet watching and supporting your every step of the journey.

While Dela Torre notes he was unsure initially if 100 days would be enough time to get the hang of sweep picking, by the end of the video, it's clear he's worked wonders on his Epiphone Les Paul guitar. The young musician is practically tearing it to shreds on the song he set out to conquer, a metal track by the band Unearth.

"Woo-hoo!" He writes in his video. "To be honest, I surprised myself!"

You can check out each day of Dela Torre's challenge here.

More of the Good News:
Student Motivated to Change Her Life Through Push-Ups
How a YouTube Video Completely Changed the Lives of Two Strangers
Woman Goes to the Gym for 100 Days, and Here Are Her Incredible Results