Bloody fingers, happy soul

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

My first guitar was used more as a prop than an instrument. I convinced my parents to buy it for me when I was in sixth grade. It was a white electric guitar that was so cheap, I don’t even think it had a brand. None of that mattered, though, because all I did with it was pantomime in front of the mirror along with my favorite angsty songs from bands like Weezer, Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins.

The only songs I could “play” were the opening bars to “Wish You Were Here,” by Pink Floyd (every guitarist’s entry-level song) and a few lines of “My Country ’Tis of Thee” for some odd reason. Nobody ever wanted to hear me play either of those songs, and I got tired of my parents or sisters barging in and making fun of me when they caught me air guitaring in front of the mirror, so I shoved it into a back corner of my closet and forgot about it.

It wasn’t until I was in my early 20s when I picked up a guitar again. This time it was an acoustic that was so poorly made, the laminate was coming off in big strips. I bought it for something like $25 at a pawn shop in Santa Cruz, Calif., where I rented an upstairs room from a family while I worked at Pebble Beach Golf Resort. The family were Seventh-day Adventists and invited me to sup with them every evening so they could inform me about how I was bound for the fires of hell if I didn’t change my ways, among other thrilling topics.

I got so sick of being told I was going to burn in hell that I pooled together my meager resources and bought that cheap acoustic guitar in the hopes that I could beg out of the dinnertime fire and brimstone by claiming I had to practice.

It worked. Dinnertime inquisitions stopped altogether because I’d eat in my rented room alone and practice chord shapes until my fingers bled.

Almost a year later, I was playing entire songs and singing along with them. I had mastered most of the basic chord shapes and moved onto barre chords and more complex fingerpicking and strumming patterns that were beyond my abilities when I started learning.

These were the days before YouTube, when you had to actually suffer through something if you wanted to learn it. Now there are tens of thousands of instructional videos available, on virtually any subject. It’s never been easier to learn an instrument than right now — but you still have to put in the work.

Some 20 years later, I’ve owned many guitars, along with every other instrument we can add to our collection. Those songs I “played” in front of the mirror as a 12-year-old are now songs I cover at the bar on a Saturday night, along with others released in a handful of albums by my band. We never had delusions that we’d “make it,” but I always hoped something would spirit me away from the mundane workaday existence. I’ll keep you posted on that front.

Now, we might get a few thousand listens on Spotify every month or so. We’ve played the Festival at Sandpoint and a few other noteworthy gigs. Most of our highlights are behind us, and that’s fine with me at this point. 

On the other hand, there are actual AI bands like one called Velvet Sundown that have amassed millions of views on Spotify. The “band” released two albums on Spotify and even had promotional photos and backstories of the “band members.” 

Velvet Sundown eventually acknowledged its inauthenticity by stating the band was, “Not quite human. Not quite machine” but living “somewhere in between.”

Umm, OK. So… fake? Got it.

One reason I continue to listen to live music is because it’s art. Real, analog, non-artificial art. I’m not interested in watching someone play “Guitar Hero” while claiming it’s an instrument, or typing commands into a prompt to generate sounds from an AI website and calling it music. I’d rather listen to terrible original music than catchy AI tunes any day of the week.

Think of the way you feel when you examine an AI-generated photo for too long. There’s just something off about it. For me, I just feel empty, like I dragged a dry cloth through my soul. The same goes for AI music. It might masquerade as music and fool some people; but, if you listen closely enough, you’ll always experience the “uncanny valley” of emptiness between the bars. Even as more tech bros and billionaires try to convince us that AI is the wave of the future, it will always be fake; it will always leave you feeling empty inside.

It’s a slow progression. It might start with an artist using AI to help generate lyrics. Then they might use it to find a chord progression or a unique hook. Soon, this person who learned an instrument just like I did — bloody fingers and all — is just typing prompts and publishing the results. 

One song at a time, we’re losing the fragile beauty of honest creation. We’re losing art. Someday, I believe we’ll swing back into an analog embrace, shrugging off AI as a failed experiment, but not yet.

Until then, I’ll drag these bloody fingers through the uncanny valley and leave droplets as breadcrumbs to confuse the bots along the way. Why? Because it’s all we have left as artists. If the AI tech bros want to take that from us, they’ll have to endure our stubborn resistance.

“Do not go gentle into that good night,” wrote Dylan Thomas, an actual human being. “… Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Damn right.