The Youtube Barrueco Incident

On August 14 2011, I received an email from youtube stating that two videos were removed from my channel due to a copyright claim made by Manuel Barrueco. They were the two clips from a concert taped from Turkish TV a long time ago where he played Chick Korea's children's songs 6 and 18. I had another clip on my channel from the same concert of him playing Rodrigo's Invocacion and Danza and somehow that one was still there. Had he missed it? Anyway, it was now too risky to keep it online so I deleted it right away, along with everything else on my channel that was not mine. That is, all the stuff I taped from TV in the nineties. About 40 videos of various guitarists including Jorge Cardoso, John Williams, Paco Pena, etc. Later on throughout the day I realized that several other videos of Manuel Barrueco were also taken down from youtube either by Barrueco via a copyright claim or users who became aware of the operation and got scared. I watched Barrueco videos disappear from youtube over the next couple of days. Most of the Barrueco stuff on youtube is gone now with the exception of the official clips that promote his DVD and the brief videos that showcase the Cordoba Guitar Festival. Some accounts were actually terminated due to repeated copyright offences to Mr. Barrueco and there was one clip that was taken down again via a copyright claim that seems to have featured a player who performed a piece 'arranged' by Barrueco. I cannot be 100% sure as the video is gone but the description which still remains leads me to believe that is the case.

Having your youtube account terminated is a pretty awful thing to happen. First of all, everything you have there,  along with all of the non-offending stuff, is gone forever. Besides, you lose your subscribers, view counts, friends list, connections, statistics you name it… And you are pretty much banned from youtube, that is, you cannot open a new account, at least not with the same email address. That is what youtube tells you anyway.

I wonder what at this point in time prompted Mr. Barrueco to take action and eradicate his unofficial presence from youtube. I do understand that the videos were instances of copyright infringement in that he could make money selling them on DVDs. The sad thing though is that the youtube users who got punished/hurt by this by either getting a strike on their channels or having their accounts terminated are probably the people who loved and admired Barrueco the most. The videos were very popular too. The Invocacion and Danza video that I deleted was the most popular video on my channel with over 10,000 views. Again, I wonder, if Manuel Barrueco will benefit or suffer from this in the long run.

Once I started getting over the sadness of Barrueco's disappearance from youtube I immediately started to worry about the videos of Julian Bream and Andres Segovia masterclasses posted by various users. I say watch them before the are taken down :)

Jorge Cardoso - one of the best composers for classical guitar

I truly enjoy playing Cardoso's pieces as they all share this rare quality: when you listen to them you think they are technically demanding and tricky whereas in fact they just slide through your fingers.

This is in contrast to many other compositions that practically break your hands and they make the player sound mediocre or incompetent no matter how well they perform. For starters, Cardoso composes all his works ON the guitar FOR guitar players. So, he almost never writes passages that require inhuman finger stretches or fast jumps in-between far positions. Having a thorough knowledge of the instrument and being a player of it may be a necessary condition for composing like Cardoso, but it is not sufficient. What I mean is that there are plenty of other composers that are themselves guitar players and their compositions do not flow technically like Cardoso's. One example that pops in my mind right away is Barrios' Vals no3, op8. Absolutely lovely composition but no matter how hard I tried to articulate it properly, I failed. It was so difficult to make the piece flow that I simply gave up after a while. I do not consider myself to be a virtuoso, but even when I listen to the greats, I hear the same problem. The piece resists being played smoothly. That is why I am generally reluctant to play Barrios as his pieces are too difficult and the listener can tell that they are. And Barrios was a guitar player himself. A virtuoso…

Flamenco musicians compose directly on the guitar. So, they should be composing just like Cardoso, perfect for fingers. Right? Nope. Look at Serranito. One of my favourite flamenco musicians. When you try playing his stuff, you feel like they were written for players with superhuman strength. Anyway, to make a long story short, I recommend Cardoso for any guitar player who wants to sound like a virtuoso :). They are very profitable pieces -for lack of a better term- in that they'll sound lovely even if you can barely play them…

Apanhei-te, Cavaquinho! by Ernesto Nazareth

Jorge Cardoso's arrangement of such a joyful and optimistic piece coming from a composer who had a very sad life... Because he passed away about 80 years ago, Nazareth's whole repertoire is now in public domain. You can visit http://www.ernestonazareth.com.br/ and download any piano partition you wish to take a look at, arrange, play, etc.