This month, let’s shapeshift into the National Mixquirer, because enquiring minds want to know about the fascinating world of YouTube music scandals! We’ll start with the Giacomo Turra flap.
I’ll summarize how AI summarized a summary of the situation:
Giacomo Turra, a popular funk and R&B guitarist known for his social media presence, has been accused of copying solos note-for-note from other musicians, passing them off as his own in viral content, and selling tabs and backing tracks of these compositions without crediting the original artists. Turra posted an apology video, which was later deleted. The backlash led to some companies distancing themselves from Turra. His YouTube channel has also been taken down, though his Instagram remains active.
This whole kerfuffle metastasized into talking about the other ways musicians cheat: They do comping! And pitch correction! And quantization! Just as Photoshopped models set up unrealistic beauty standards, this musical techno-cheating creates unattainable musical standards. One music educator commented, “It has been devastatingly heartbreaking to have so many students who beat themselves up at the slightest bit of imperfection…At the end of the day, the way I see it is that if we are to believe that music is an extension of the human experience, and we as humans aren’t perfect, music shouldn’t have to be.”
Major props on his wanting people to experience the joy of music. But are “unattainable” standards always destructive? Maybe not, if people can differentiate between performers and composers. I can hear it now: “Those are two different things.” That’s exactly my point, and that’s why Turra stealing solos has nothing to do with, say, comping.
WHAT IS CHEATING?
I recently played a guitar solo and wasn’t happy with one of the notes, so I punched multiple times until I got what I wanted. It seems odd to think that could be “cheating” in a world where “photoshop” has graduated from a noun to a verb. And apologies for the spoiler, but the Death Star that was blown up at the end of Star Wars didn’t actually exist. There was no Death Star.
Why can the visual arts embrace Photoshopping or CGI, while music is held to a higher standard? Well, as Marshall McLuhan said, “The medium is the message.”
Art was traditionally tangible. Sculpture, paintings, carvings—you could see and touch art. We analyze ancient civilizations by the art they left behind. Their art truly was for the ages.
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Conversely, music was always intangible and of the moment. We don’t know what kind of music the Sumerians played, or what the songs in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream sounded like. Only within the past 150 years has music become tangible.
A tangible medium made releasing music ageless. If you played the wrong chord live, it would be over in a second and no one would care—but play the wrong chord on a recording…and it’s forever.
So “cheating” has multiple guises. When a pop star sings live with a backing track, is that cheating? That’s up to the person who paid $500 for a ticket, and who may want a spectacle more than a concert. If there’s an entertaining mix of dancing, lighting and music, do most people care what created that experience?
However, if you go to hear “Beethoven’s Third,” you expect the musicians to actually play. Virtuosity is respected in classical music. In jazz, brilliant improvisation is part of the genre’s appeal. Listeners demand it.
COMPOSER V. PERFORMER
Perhaps expectations (and judgments) should reflect whether music is played live or recorded, and whether a musician is a player or a composer. The difference is as significant as mixing live sound compared to mixing a multitrack DAW project.
Nowadays, composers can realize their visions in the studio. You can tweak and edit to perfection…and you should! That recording is forever. But I don’t think that players need to meet the standards of composers. Performing live is part of the human experience, and it forms a real-time bond between musician and audience. Recording creates a non-real-time experience for listeners. These are quite different.
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Every note in the sheet music for the Brandenburg Concertos is quantized. That doesn’t mean the music was played with perfect quantization; it’s simply the standard Bach set. I would even argue that not comping when recording could do a disservice to your listeners if it deprives them of a more emotionally compelling take. But that doesn’t mean you need to create music that’s perfect. You need to create music that meets the standards you set for yourself.
Half a century ago, in the BBC Archives video Horizon: The Three Chord Trick, composer Charles Dodge said, “The principal reason why I use a computer for my electronic music…is to bypass performers. As a composer, I’m in control of the process influencing the listener from all stages of the composition—composing it through to putting it on tape. Much the way a conductor, if he always had an orchestra at his disposal, would be able to do.”
Giacamo Turra should not have stolen stuff. We need better role models for upcoming musicians than him. Clicks aren’t for the ages; integrity is. But if you’re making something that you’ll have to live with years or decades from now, go ahead and cheat. Cheat as much as you want—not to make the music perfect, but to create a perfect reflection of your musical vision.
