Allegations that social media guitarist Giacomo Turra has been stealing songs for viral content gained traction earlier this week – and now guitar players who had their work appropriated have begun speaking out.
Last Friday, YouTuber Danny Sapko posted a video to his channel titled, ‘I caught this famous Instagram musician STEALING songs’, in which he scrutinizes Turra’s content and accuses the popular funk and R&B guitarist of repurposing pieces and selling tabs to compositions from other creators as his own without due credit.
In his video, Sapko compares Turra’s clips to those published by Jack Gardiner, Alex Hutchings, Tom Quayle, Marco Baldi, Travis Dykes, and, in a followup video, Jacob Collier and Ben Romano, the latter of whom “stopped doing videos online” because of the situation. More names were also referenced in the video's description.
After the video went live, Andertons pulled its own video with Turra offline, and D’Angelico and Laney took his artist pages down from their respective websites.
Now, a number of the players mentioned in Sapko’s video have spoken out, with fusion virtuoso Gardiner – whose own music was copied without credit a number of years ago – telling Guitar World that he found the exposé to be “horrifying”.
“I first became aware of Giacomo in 2020 when I was tagged in the comments on a video he’d uploaded playing over the Luther Vandross track Never Too Much, saying things like, ‘Sounds just like Jack Gardiner’s improvisation/arrangement,’” he recalls.
“I clicked the video and thought, ‘This does sound weirdly familiar.’ Every time I’d go back to his video, any comment mentioning me was being deleted. So I went back and checked an improvisation I’d uploaded to my YouTube channel back in 2013. It was note-for-note, albeit with a lot of editing/production tricks on his guitar audio.
“Of course, there was no tag, credit or mention of me at all in his video or the description. It’s a weird feeling seeing 300,000+ views and hundreds of comments saying ‘how inspired they are,’ or, ‘I’ve been listening to this all day,’ when your original improvisation only has a tiny fraction of the views.
“I initially thought I’d just message him and ask him to tag me, until I discovered something a little bit more sinister. Giacomo was selling tabs/transcriptions and a backing track of my solo and arrangement on his website. Not only my transcriptions, but a lot of other artists' and guitarists' tabs, too.”
Gardiner reached out to Turra directly threatening legal action, and the exchange ended after Gardiner asked him to “promise that he’d never sell transcriptions that weren’t his and to properly credit/tag any artists he’d cover in the future”.
A few weeks later, though, the same thing occurred, when ‘Coffee Music’ – a popular music channel on Instagram – reposted a clip of Turra playing one of Gardiner’s solos. Again, there was no credit or tag on the video, which accumulated hundreds of thousands of views, and when Gardiner posted a comment, he was hounded by fans.
“I was faced with backlash from his followers, with comments like, ‘You should be grateful that people can hear your bedroom solos. Giacomo has done you a favour. Cut your hair and fix your image and maybe you’ll have an audience like this.’
“Quite funny, but quite disheartening to read in the middle of a pandemic where we’re all struggling to make a living from music.”
For Alex Hutchings, it was a similar story: “He has never reached out to me and I’d only heard of him about a week before I saw his video playing my solo,” he tells Guitar World.
In an extended response video posted to his YouTube channel, the fusion virtuoso recalls seeing a ‘version’ of one of his solos on Turra’s socials around eight months ago.
“I happened to come across it, and I initially thought, ‘Oh, wow, he sounds inspired by me,’” Hutchings remembers. “Then you think, ‘That’s a bit arrogant,’ but I watched it back and I thought, ‘No, it feels really similar, like the nuances of what I do.’ Then I looked back and I found my original video from three years ago.
“It was quite upsetting. The thing that was upsetting for me… [Turra’s] video got 250,000 views, I think it’s up to 300,000 now, and my original one stuck at six [thousand]. Even though I was tagged way, way down in the description, nobody saw that and just assumed it was [Turra's] playing.
“My musical DNA has culminated in me being able to improvise in that way. For someone to come along and essentially pretend it’s their solo, that’s the thing that’s difficult. I was quiet about it and didn’t say anything. Months later, Danny put this video together, and I suppose it was shocking for me to see it wasn’t just me. It is disappointing.”
Gardiner, meanwhile, sees the whole situation as an unfortunate “sign of the times” and indicative of the desire to achieve social media success – and fast-tracked chops – as quickly as possible.
“Seeing not only friends and heroes of mine having their solos plagiarised note-for-note with zero credits, but guys with smaller followings just being completely ripped off, broke my heart,” he says. “Especially full songs and transcriptions being for sale.
“I’ve spoken with many musician friends about Giacomo’s videos in the past and it’s honestly disheartening for a lot of us who are trying to do things the ‘honest’ way. I feel like it’s a bit of a sign of the times.
I just hope Giacomo can learn from this and go back to loving music and guitar in the future
Jack Gardiner
“Some people want to fast-track not only a career, but their skills on the instrument without necessarily putting in the years and years of hard work and practice. The process can take a whole lifetime when you do it the ‘right’ way, but I’d like to think we do it for the love of music and the instrument!”
Both players, though, hope Turra can learn from the situation.
“I just hope Giacomo can learn from this and go back to loving music and guitar in the future,” Gardiner says. “Rebuild and keep playing music, build your own vocabulary, but make sure you do it the right way next time, without stealing a living from other musicians' hard work.”
Hutchings, addressing Turra directly in his video, adds: “I hope you're going to learn from this. Please never do this to people again. Please focus on your style and try to get merit based upon your musical DNA.”
Responding to the accusations in his own video, Turra said, “Since that thing with Jack Gardiner happened, I have always been really attentive to credit this artist but apparently this credit must have not been evident enough. I really want to apologize to the guitar community for this behavior.”
Visit Jack Gardiner and Alex Hutchings' Instagram accounts to explore their videos.
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