Exposing Fake Guitarists Online: Levels of Deception in Modern Music

The Problem with Online Guitarists

• ⚠️ The speaker highlights a serious problem with many "fake guitar players" online, setting unrealistic expectations for students and musicians.
• 💡 This issue stems from musicians playing to backing tracks and bands releasing music that is not possible to play in real life.
• 🎯 Many online guitarists portray themselves as playing genuinely, but are not actually playing what they show in their videos, despite claiming otherwise.

Levels of Guitar Fakery

• 📈 Level One Fakery involves recording guitars "to the grid" and using MIDI to compose complex music, which can be played live but often requires a click track with vocal cues (e.g., Polyphia, Periphery).
• ⚡ Level Two Fakery includes faking seemingly playable guitar parts, often by speeding up recordings or using heavy editing, making live performances difficult or impossible (e.g., Joamo, Rings of Saturn, DragonForce).
• 🔥 Level Three Fakery represents the most egregious deception, where guitarists claim to play humanly impossible riffs that sound robotic or like electronic music, heavily relying on video editing and lying about their authenticity (e.g., Davin Glover).

The Nature of the Guitar

• 🎸 The electric guitar is primarily a blues instrument, inherently imperfect and designed for expressive techniques like bends and vibrato, not robotic perfection.
• 🧠 Playing perfectly like some online guitarists is often not humanly possible on a real guitar, as the instrument is not perfectly in tune by design.
• 🔍 The speaker, with 20 years of experience, can discern fake playing, but acknowledges that those without a trained ear might perceive these "fake" players as legends.

Call for Authenticity

• ✅ The speaker advocates for humanity and authenticity to be brought back into guitar playing and music creation.
• 🛠️ He emphasizes the importance of practicing and performing music in one take rather than relying on excessive overdubbing and production to achieve an artificial "perfect" sound.
• 👏 The goal is to create real content and foster a highly respected art form by being genuine with the audience and the craft.