The Italian funk guitarist and electric guitar social media influencer Giacomo Turra has been accused of using other musician’s arrangements without crediting them, using them to grow his online following and then monetising other artists’ work via downloadable tabs and audio.
Turra’s rise in recent years has been meteoric. He has over 741,000 followers on Instagram, and a string of endorsements, with a signature guitar from D’Angelico, his own gold-foil electric guitar pickups from Mama, a signature envelope filter from SolidGoldFX, and he uses Laney guitar amps. He released The Groove Sessions EP in 2021, a mix of covers and originals, and a number of singles
But YouTuber Danny Sapko alleges that Turra has made a habit of “stealing” other artists songs for his online content, and posted a video with side by side comparisons of Turra’s versions and the originals. Sapko’s video begins with a couple of examples from Jack Gardiner.
“It turns out, from the very start of his social media rise Giacomo has been using other people’s compositions, not properly crediting the artist, passing them off as his own, and selling them tabs and isolated tracks on his website and Patreon,” said Sapko. “On this video there was initially no credit to Jack – and as you can see here [Turra] replied to every single comment apart from the one mentioning Jack.”
Responding to the allegations, Turra posted an apology video, acknowledging that, circa 2021, he had in fact used a Jack Gardiner solo to Luther Vandross’ Never Too Much without crediting Gardiner.
But he argued that since then he had credited the artists whose work he had used. “Since then I’ve been really careful in trying to credit every guitar player or artist that I was playing the arrangement from,” said Turra.
Sapko cited another instance when Turra used a solo from English online guitar teacher and jazz guitar maestro Alex Hutchings. Sapko says Turra “buried” the credit in video description.
“He repeated this song when promoting his signature pickup with someone else’s signature style,” said Sapko. “Looking at the number of views, Giacomo could make a comfortable living from the videos alone but the real crime is that these were for sale as Giacomo’s original transcriptions, with none of it going to the original source. This is especially bad when you consider that [Gardiner and Hutchings] sell their own tabs and music scores – and some videos he is copying have barely any views.”
Such videos would include Marco Baldi’s jam over Incognito’s Don’t You Worry About A Thing. Again, the credit is included in the YouTube Shorts video description, and as Sapko notes, it is part of the small print, and not sending traffic or money Baldi’s way.
Some of the arrangements that Turra has covered over the years were written by players with little to no public profile.
Turra used YouTuber Kenny Lu’s guitar solo for Daft Punk’s Bring Life Back To Music. The original video on Lu’s YouTube channel, Kenzo Slice (153 subscribers) had 57 views by the time of Sapko published his video. On YouTube alone, Turra’s video has more than 66,000 views. “The credit says ‘inspired by’ when the truth is it is 75 per cent identical,” said Sapko.
He also alleges Turra removed links to his tabs after there were complaints in the comments section. But screenshots show Turra apparently telling his followers to DM him on Instagram for tab info – on one instance for a Christone “Kingfish” Ingram solo that Turra had used in a video.
Turra admits that the credits for the arrangers were not prominently displayed below the videos, and for not coming clean to his followers when the arrangement was by someone else.
"If I got a comment saying, ‘Hey, great arrangement!’ I should have specified, ‘Hey, thank you so much, but this arrangement is by Kahil Ferraris’ or anyone who I was covering," said Turra.
Furthermore, Turra has posted a DropBox folder of screenshots with credits on them. He also denies selling tablature of other people’s arrangements.
Since that thing with Jack Gardiner happened, I have always been really attentive to credit the artist but apparently these credits must not be evident enough
Giacomo Turra
“When it would come to playing a full arrangement by someone else, since that thing with Jack Gardiner happened, I have always been really attentive to credit the artist but apparently these credits must not be evident enough,” said Turra. “I really want to apologise to the guitar community for this kind of behaviour and I will put a link with a DropBox folder.
“I don’t know, it feels like I am justifying myself, and definitely, I am, but I just want to put some screenshots from the credits from those videos mentioned by this content creator, and even messages from the original authors of these arrangements, just to show that I was not doing it to scam them or take advantage of them. Again, I am really sorry and I hope that I will be able to do better moving forward.”
Many in the comments section remain unconvinced by Turra's apology, which was more of a rebuttal. You can watch it and Sapko's original video above.
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