Popular social media guitarist Giacomo Turra has been accused of stealing other musician’s songs for his content in a new video from YouTuber Danny Sapko.
Over the past few years, Turra’s stock as a funk and R&B guitarist has skyrocketed from lockdown bedroom player to Spotify streaming star thanks to his catalog of online playing clips that have helped amass him thousands of followers across his social media channels.
However, in a new video, Sapko scrutinizes this content and alleges that Turra has been directly repurposing pieces from other creators as his own without due credit.
“This is one of the most unbelievable things I have ever seen in music,” Sapko says. “What started out as maybe a bit of a joke has become less and less of a joke the more I looked into it. This is a video I feel had to be made.”
Sapko’s research began after he received a tip-off from guitarist and YouTuber Levi Clay, who, in a comment in one of Sapko’s videos, wrote of Turra: “It’s a shame he hasn’t apologised for STEALING arrangements by several artists (like literally solos and everything) and then passing them off as his own work and even selling transcriptions of them on his site.”
“It turns out that from the very start of his social media rise, Giacomo’s been using other people’s compositions, not properly crediting the artist, passing them off as his own, and selling tabs and isolated tracks on his website and Patreon,” says Sapko.
To illustrate his point, Sapko A/Bs some of Turra’s clips against those from a handful of other artists, including prog virtuoso Jack Gardiner and jazz heavyweight Alex Hutchings.
In Turra’s clips, Sapko notes that credit towards the original artists is not forthcoming. In some clips – including one that appeared to copy Gardiner – credit was missing altogether, while in others credit is ascribed to the artist by saying the clips are “inspired by” them, as opposed to citing them as the original composer.
And, as Sapko states, Turra also allegedly sells tabs to these clips via his website and Patreon: “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 these two guitarists [Gardiner and Hutchings] sell their own music scores.”
In a video on his own YouTube channel, Giacomo responded to Sapko’s accusations, saying, “I swear that these artists were credited in the videos. Not only that but most of them even shared the video, commented on the video and messaged me.
“The main thing that I wanted to address also was that this guy calling me out said that I was selling tabs with other people’s arrangements. I only released one songbook in September 2024.
“It only contains five songs… and there are six covers that are my arrangements. The only where I felt the need to specify that it was taken from a lesson from Travis Dykes is the bass arrangement.
“There must have been something wrong in crediting these artists in the sense that probably these credits were not evident enough in the videos, and probably I should have also answered comments. I should have specified.
“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.”
Following Sapko's original video, Andertons removed its own interview that the retailer had recently shot with Turra. Turra's artist and signature guitar pages on the D'Angelico website have also both been taken offline.
Guitar World has reached out to Giacomo Turra and his representatives for comment.
