Double Bass whats going on in this video?

[gnypp45]

The fast stuff in the Czardas video is 100% fake.

This is a revealing passage: Start at 2:42, use head phones and pay close attention to the sudden change in timbre, intonation, and articulation. At 2:43 - 2:45 we hear a real double bass with its characteristic thick attack and the intonation imperfections you would expect when playing a very fast scale by on one string, but at 2:46 - 2:51 the fast one-string arpeggio runs are clearly played by a MIDI sequencer. Here the attacks are crystal clear and every single note is in perfect pitch, at the same time as the timbre is very artificial.

All this becomes even more apparent at 0.5x playback speed.

 

[CaseyVancouver]

So why would Lev Weksler bother to do this?

The psychology of a fraud is interesting. It all has been analyzed of course, with talk of the ‘fraud triangle’ and such. Money may be a motivation. A narcissist who wants attention? Who knows …maybe who cares?

Honest musicians may care.

I have to agree with the bassist who said what Weksler is doing is dishonest and disrespectful.

Weksler’s ‘flight of the bumblebee’ vid is at about 2.5 million views. He has many other videos and 23,000 subscribers. Many comment how wonderful he is.

Money from a million YouTube views can make $2,000-$5000, or 2 million views can make $40,000. It all depends on where the views are from, the advertisers budget and other reasons.
I got this info from Invalid Link Removed

Money and attention are good motivation for fraud.

 

[matthewv789]

To quote from the article I posted "I hope this video inspires other bass players to learn this piece and other pieces of comparable difficulty". I think this is a valid point, beyond what people believe the authenticity of the videos to be. IMHO of course.

This is a good point and I'm down with that, but I'm not down with the deception.

One example is that the most popular audio on YouTube of Beethoven's Moonlight sonata is a programmed MIDI sampler, not a real pianist playing a real piano. Which kind of sucks that that's the most popular one (since there are so many great performances by real musicians worthy of notice), but at least the original poster isn't specifically trying to fool people into thinking it's real. (It doesn't SAY it's a sampler, but it doesn't make any great claims to being real either, doesn't name a pianist who supposedly played it, doesn't have a faked-up video of him supposedly playing it, and doesn't, as far as I know, delete comments that point out that it's sampled.) In that case I don't mind much because people are inspired by the MUSIC (Beethoven's composition), and not fawning over the supposed mastery of the player. The case of Lev Wexler is very different, and much more disturbing. I suppose it might inspire some people about the possibilities of the double bass in general, and perhaps that might lead them to discover other (REAL) players or be inspired to play the instrument themselves, but mostly it's just fawning over the "master" (literally a lot of obviously young students call him that), and creating unrealistic expectations for what the instrument can sound like. The deletion of negative comments, and posting of some videos specifically trying to refute criticisms of fakeness (while still being obviously faked), speaks to a more sinister motive than just inspiring people to the music or the instrument.