Acoustic guitar virtuoso Marcin recently responded to 'fake playing' claims that were levelled against him by dropping a new music video that breaks down his playing style – but it didn't go quite according to plan.
Over the past few weeks, Marcin's playing has been put under the microscope by the naysayers, prompting the guitarist to come out in an attempt to prove his mind-blowing chops are actually real.
Marcin wrote a song about the heat, How Music Works, posting a video tagged “Proving I'm Not Fake (Once And For All)”. However, the video somewhat backfired.
Classical guitar teacher Cameron Fernandez – aka Sor Hands on YouTube – was one individual who called Marcin a “fake”. He remained skeptical after watching How Music Works.
Fernandez has no issues with the bassline opening, the tapping, but argues, “As he puts everything altogether, it’s just simply not actually happening.”
Marcin starts How Music Works with a bassline, building the rhythm. The sheet music for all of this is in the background overhead. Fernandez has no issue with this. He has issue with the passage of 16th notes that Marcin brings in as the melody.
“No way, that’s not happening,” he says in a reaction video. “We’re going to go through some examples of Marcin’s live playing where he is playing stuff like this, but there’s no way that those 16th notes are being articulated like that, all while he is playing the bassline and the drums [tapping on his guitar].”
Marcin did not take Fernandez’s words lying down.
“Thank you all for the love here! I’m on tour now, and in my hotel today I saw there was some unintended controversy surrounding this video,” Marcin wrote shortly after posting the video.
“I’m quite sad to see any negativity in the world of guitar, and I will not add anything to the discourse. However, once I got back to my hotel we recored a really quick raw take of this tune, and I decided to post it.”
Marcin's video from his hotel room is one-take, one camera, and him performing the knuckle-bending How Music Works to take the doubters behind the curtain.
Still, Fernandez was not convinced. Again, it was the 16th note melody line that he took issue with. He argues that Marcin was not playing the 16th note passage in the hotel, and instead was playing some eighth notes. Fernandez’s point is that the first video is an overdub and that should be okay. There’s no need to pretend.
“This is the meat of the controversy,” he adds. “I am not saying that Marcin’s guitar playing is fake. I’m saying that most of it is real and it’s weird that he faked this one little part.
“You’re not morally obligated to have it actually be one-guitar recording. You’re allowed to layer things. You have no moral obligation to not use two guitar parts.”
So, in short, we can all agree, Marcin can play this stuff forwards and back, but there's no harm in owning the overdubs when they're needed.
YouTuber Danny Sapko also weighed in on the exchange, reflecting, “Marcin is an incredible player but gets a lot of comments about his playing being fake. That’s because a lot of his stuff is prerecorded and then he mimes along on video, which I think is absolutely fine because when you see him live, he can really do it.”
Yes, we have all seen Marcin’s videos. They are crazy. They blew Slash’s mind, too. How does he do it?
Well, we have seen Marcin do this IRL. Just check out the video he shot for Guitar World [above], where there were no CGI tricks, no in-camera illusions (folks, we simply don’t have the budget), just honest-to-God virtuosity, one player, his Ibanez signature acoustic, and six acoustic guitar strings.
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