The Machine in the Cockpit

Eight years ago, I sat in a Denver apartment surrounded by guitars and notebooks, trying to figure out how to make music into a life. The word AI floated around then like a ghost. It sounded like science fiction, the kind of thing that would swallow the coder’s job, the accountant’s formulas, maybe even the lawyer’s briefs. But I told myself the artist was safe. Creativity was untouchable.

And yet—here we are. The machine can sing now. It can strum chords and bend melodies into shapes that sound almost human. For a moment, that thought felt like turbulence. If art is no longer a fortress, what does that mean for someone like me?

But I’ve learned that every cockpit has instruments. The compass, the altimeter, the radios—all of them are tools. None of them erase the pilot. They extend the pilot. They make flight possible.

That’s how I’ve begun to see AI. Not as a rival, but as another set of instruments. A way to capture more of the signal while it’s passing through. When I write with its help, it’s not reducing me. It’s amplifying me. It’s catching the thought before it slips into static, and letting me shape it more clearly than I could alone.

Why should music be different? For years I’ve used loops, pedals, plugins—little machines that bend sound into something useful, something alive. Was that cheating? Or was it simply another way of steering the aircraft?

The longer I sit with it, the more I think the machine isn’t the threat. The threat is the refusal to fly with it. To pretend the cockpit hasn’t changed.

So I’m opening the door to it. I’m letting the instruments glow and hum beside me. Not because I want to give the controls away, but because I know where I want to go. The machine can’t supply the horizon. It can’t feel the turbulence in my chest when a line lands just right, or when a melody cracks something open.

That’s still human. That’s still mine.

The machine is here, yes. But so am I. And the journey continues—with more instruments, more signals, more ways to map the sky.