Someone posts a video of themselves playing a cool guitar lick. Turra finds it, replicates it, records it; shoots a video of himself miming his own recording, and then posts it as if it were a live performance of his own music. When the original musician finds out and asks for some kind of attribution, Turra maybe provides credit buried somewhere deep in the comments section. You know…where you’re never supposed to go. Meanwhile, Turra doesn’t share the revenue from his monetized videos or the sale of his plagiarized transcriptions.
On April 4, a salty-mouthed bassist named Danny Sapko posted a brace of videos here and here, exposing Turra’s fraud and (more importantly) his sale of stolen music. Sapko’s videos blew up, the rest of the online guitar community piled on, and Turra posted a halfhearted apology video (on YouTube, where he was called out but not on Instagram, where he’s famous) before deleting his YouTube presence altogether.
Turra’s endorsements and instrument collaborations have evaporated, as has his .com site. His Insta following is still some 730K people strong, though. And Turra’s currently on tour, playing live (although nowhere nearly as well as he does online) before audiences who don’t seem to care much either way.
It was at this point that the scandal hit my feed. I don’t even play guitar, so for it to reach me is a good indicator that the matter is at the white dwarf phase of stellar death, as far as the Internet Outrage Machine is concerned. But what’s especially interesting is how this has prompted a much deeper discussion about honesty and artistry.
As numerous creators—including prominent pop music deconstructionist Rick Beato—have pointed out, mimicking live musical performances has been an accepted (if distasteful) practice for well longer than any of us has been alive. Where Turra crosses a line, however, is by faking a performance within a context where audiences wouldn’t really expect it, thereby deceiving them to the point of revoking his own social license to operate.
