We recently featured an article titled “Where Is Music Actually Going?” It was a thought experiment with respect to the future of music. Really, the future of music could be wide open. But I tend to have a more realistic look at things and what I see is pretty revealing. Enter today’s case study of the newest internet guitar goon, Giacomo Turra.

I blame my brother for introducing me to Giacomo. He’s much more connected to social media than me and where else would I turn to find the interweb’s newest guitar sensation? At first, everything looked kosher, even outrageously kosher. My bro would send me the newest Instagram clip of Giacomo playing some new strange looking guitar while boating around Italy. Or, Giacomo would be in a studio looping several instruments together to put a groovy, flashy solo over. He even had vids with his mates, jamming some cool George Benson-esque grooves. Sometimes they would be in his studio; other times they were at some random, nondescript location, who knows where! Everything was hip and very interwebby, even amassing over two million followers. And the T-shirts! I have to admit, he puts my collection to shame. Every video had some sporty, goofy short sleeve button up and his trademark “over the top” backward hat.

Ok, so what’s wrong with any of that? On the surface? Nothing. Giacomo looked like a nice young boy, reaping the benefits of his creative talent on the interwebs. Two million followers equals a nice bit of ad revenue too and his name was everywhere! Guitar companies were giving him free guitars. Other players wanted to collaborate on the newest internet guitar hit. He was able to book tours, supporting name brand acts and really build quite the following for himself. Everything was there for mass appeal, even among non-guitarists. I mean, C’mon man! THE T-SHIRTS!!! But all of that cool cruising through the world wide trash heap eventually ended up with that Cadillac convertible going over the cliff, Thelma & Louise style. What happened?

I’ll tell you what happened. Like too many internet and other shysters he got greedy. He went too far. And people started to realize that Giacomo was not quite as hip or good as he was leading his internet followers to believe. And herein lies the issue–the gist of today’s blog. This is where music gets seedy, and dirty. Where people start to tune out because, like so many other things, they find out it’s fake. But it’s really worse than that. What Giacomo did is akin to not just misrepresentation; it was outright theft. And in my opinion, ultimately: FRAUD.

Now as all this came to light, every internet guitarist under the sun had something to say about the situation. Most were appalled, rightfully so. For those of us that work tirelessly at our craft, struggling night and day to do something really creative, Giacomo represents the Milli Vanilli of guitarists–plastic, over-produced and fake. An utter outrage to real players. However, some of Giacomo’s fan boys came right to the rescue. “He plays fine.” “What he did isn’t that bad.” “People are just jealous!” Were they on the take too? I’m going cut to the chase, as I believe integrity is the ultimate backbone of music. You either have it or you don’t. Sure, our young boy wonder bread Giacomo isn’t the only huckster out there, but his particular case is extremely illustrative of where music could go (and frankly does go) when an internet full of music listening idiots champion an illusion.

So first of all, for you Giacomo fan boys–Go fuck yourself. You should be calling him out for his crimes and not wiping his bottom. I don’t care how good you are, or how good your think you are, or how good the interweb trash heap thinks you are, or how many mindless followers you have; if you are aiding and abetting this guitar goon, you lose all credibility. It’s not about whether he CAN play. It’s about much more than that. No one has a problem with him putting up videos of himself actually playing. But in many cases, that’s not what he did. AND, his musical trespasses were so much worse than that! So what did he do?

First up, misrepresentation. Giacomo is no where near the player that he advertised himself as. Other real guitarists caught Giacomo “miming” guitar solos, rather than actually playing them. I didn’t even know what this was or why anyone would be this much of a goon, but apparently this is a new thing. It makes me think of “Air Guitar” competitions. You just pretend that you are playing some really cool, hip solo even if you can’t actually perform it. Who cares right? Two million followers didn’t have a problem either, at least at first.

Many guitarists suspect that what he was actually doing was: a) slowing down a solo from Guitarist “X”, b) playing it at half speed or some other slowed down bpm, c) using an AI music program to then run the solo back at speed and then, d) miming the finger work at speed to make it look like he was actually performing the solo in real time. So to recap, in some fucked up way Giacomo was actually playing the solo–he just wasn’t playing the solo in real time or even capable (in most cases) of performing the solo at all.

Yes, many artists lip sync. They do this for a variety of reasons and in my opinion all of them suck–just fucking sing your shit live and let us deal with it. However, in that many artists are such withering snowflakes when you make them sing anywhere outside of the studio magic land, they do this to retain some assemblance of musical continuity (even though there is very little) for their concert crowd, who want to hear the “album”. I don’t agree with this, however at least they are technically lip syncing their OWN music. Which means (unlike Milli Vanilli) they actually had to sing and record those tracks at some point.

Giacomo, boy wonder bread extraordinaire, did not do this. The analog would be having Salt ‘N’ Peppa singing a Whitney Houston song in a much lower key and then having some AI program clean up the intonation and nuance (to make it sound just like Whitney) for their new interweb video. No disrespect to S’N’P–they would never do this because they KNOW they cannot sound like Whitney Houston! Anyone doing this type of thing is just outright LAME. Just stop. Don’t make the video if you have to fake it.

Next up, we have Giacomo stealing guitar solos from lesser known internet guitarists and billing them as his own. Ok, stop right there. This is called theft. It is also a copyright infringement! (You fan boys copyright your works, don’t you?) This act alone completely destroys any creative credibility one has. Who in the fuck would steal someone else’s guitar solo and then pass it off as his own? Giacomo Turra. Why? Because it is much easier to copy than to be original. And I mean, two million fans! C’mon man!!

It’s fine to transpose a solo to learn it. It’s fine to perform “Caprice 24” for everyone else to see (thank you Steve Vai). However, the minute you quote Caprice 24 and pass it off as your own, you are stealing and committing fraud. Not only would Niccolo roll over in his grave, if he were alive to today he would have beaten you with his violin. But who in their right mind would claim this work as their own?? It gets better. Giacomo wasn’t happy to just take the credit for the work. He sold transcriptions! He actually made money selling unauthorized guitar transcriptions of other guitarist’s solos. WTF?? Wow. What’s this called again class? THEFT.

So follow me here. You’ve got a guy who mimes stolen guitar solos. He then makes pseudo hip internet videos of this, spamming them all over the web to attract followers. Then, people who watch these videos want to hire him, or have him promote their newest guitar product. YouTube says, “Hey, we love that you have two million followers, here’s some ad revenue”. You even book tours (by showcasing your incredible fake talent) with name brand acts. And then you make a grip of cash. Except, none of this is really YOU. This is called fraud: wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain.

And that’s where this musical journey ends. Literally criminal activity–by some average Italian guitar punter. Who goes into music wanting to be criminal? It’s usually the other way around…right Jay-Z? But this is where we are unfortunately, and this is not only where music could go, this is where music is going. It’s not about music anymore, it’s about fandom. It’s about “likes”. It’s about followers. And ultimately the revenue stream that comes with it.

I don’t know about you but this isn’t why I make music or play guitar. If I might indulge the reader, I work at it for the journey. The evolution of getting better, learning new things, being able to perform works that were previously unattainable. If people like it (and I don’t incredibly suck) that’s great, but it does not change the travel plans. Those that do music for other reasons ought to check themselves. Making money is a luxury in this business. Fans are as fickle and fish like as they come. But your guitar (or your particular instrument) and all the notes that you may or may not play today, tomorrow, next week, etc., will still be there and ready to accommodate you along the way. It doesn’t care about fans, stardom or money and neither should you.

But let’s also be honest here–even searching for fame and money is a far cry from misrepresentation, theft and fraud. This is they type of activity that will nudge you along the way, saying “Hey, this doesn’t feel right”. Kind of like when your Caddy emits a strange noise from under the hood. If you, the musician, ever gets a tingling sensation in your musical brain in a similar way to this, stop the car, get out and check under the hood. Maybe pull out a map. You are most surely going the wrong way in a vehicle that will never get there. Trust me on this one.

And btw…if you ever want to watch REAL players kill it in REAL time, check out a video by Snarky Puppy. Almost all of their studio work is done in front of a live audience. Ballsy as fuck and very hard to do right, even for great players. This is the direction you should aspire to. I’m sure none of these guys thought “I’m going to make a ton of money playing this music”, until perhaps maybe one day they did. Some of their first shows had just a handful of people. But look where they are today. Incredible. No miming, no stealing, no fraud. Yes, it can be done.

Don’t be a Jerkomo!