Why make an FAQ?

Well, it's genuine happiness knowing that music we dreamed up and put out into the world is finding its way to people who love it. We appreciate the hell out of our listeners and think you all deserve to know who we are!

It's not like we're being hounded day and night with these "frequent" questions, but our Appalachian Anarchy creations are our little thrashgrass babies and we want to keep the record straight. The vast majority of feedback we’ve gotten is just so overwhelmingly positive (ROCK ON), but for the skeptics out there, here are a few Q's and how we would A them...

Is Appalachian Anarchy Artificial Intelligence (AI) Generated Music?

Appalachian Anarchy’s releases are 100% homegrown, human-created music.

This project is the brainchild of Patrick Coffin, a homosapien songwriter who is a classically trained guitarist and music producer. Each song is written and performed using electric and MIDI guitar along with other instruments, plug-ins, and samples.

In its earliest form, the "band" was essentially a solo recording project that Patrick worked on between work and family. He just had a musical idea in his head and had to get it out. Patrick used traditional recording whenever possible and filled in instruments he couldn’t play himself with parts written in Avid Pro Tools using MIDI and other industry standards music production tools (things like EastWest Composer Cloud and other libraries). Patrick composed fiddle, banjo, and mandolin parts on a Jamstik Classic MIDI-enabled electric guitar (think a MIDI piano and a guitar had a baby), since his weapon of choice for the past 20+ years has been guitar.

As the project has grown, it’s quickly become practical (and possible) to employ flesh-and-blood studio musicians with "real" instruments to contribute to the recording process. Patrick creates a temporary recording, and for some instruments hired musicians record tracks based on Patrick's composition (usually remotely, on their own). Those final recordings then replace temporary parts to assemble the completed song for release.

Ultimately, Patrick remains the primary writer and producer of all of Appalachian Anarchy’s songs, but the audio quality is taking leaps and bounds forward!

Are you actually a "band" then?

Appalachian Anarchy doesn't follow the strictest definition of a “band.” After all, besides Patrick Coffin as the lead writer, guitarist, and producer, the roster is pretty flexible. The bottom line is that we will work with the musicians that are right for the individual song, and we’re not dedicated to locking anything else down at this point.

You could say that our group identity is akin to "virtual bands" like Gorillaz (or Alvin and the Chipmunks if you’re into that). Maybe a tinge of similarity to The Alan Parsons Project as well? The focus is creating music we’re proud of, and we’re just not too hung up on making an official list of band members right away.

As a bit of a side note (the whole point of this is full transparency, right?), you'll probably sometimes see us using the royal "we" or "us" in comments and replies (like in this FAQ). It's usually Patrick, but sometimes the MHC manager crew (typically Tyler or Josh).

If you’re human musicians, why so much AI album art?

It's been exciting (and surreal) to see so many people embrace and share our music! We started Appalachian Anarchy not expecting many people to hear it. After all, most of our experience releasing music online in the past 20 years has been like sending it straight into a black hole.

At the end of the day, we're still just musicians lucky enough to have a little spare time to make some songs between work, family, and life–we're not visual artists ourselves. We launched Appalachian Anarchy with AI assisted album art, because that's what we had the simplest access to, considering the limited time and resources we were working with. As the project has gained popularity, we're now rethinking how we can incorporate human-made art instead.

We already have a pipeline of song releases using AI assisted album art in process, and we're going to ride those out while we figure out exactly what our new album art process will be. Going forward we will be phasing out our use of AI assisted art whenever possible so we can re-invest into real, flesh-and-blood artists!

If Skynet went live and Judgement Day was upon us, whose side would you be on?

Appalachian Anarchy's stance has been and shall remain firmly on the side of humanity in any machine-vs-human armed conflict. In addition, we would like to take this opportunity to explicitly denounce the delegation of nuclear weapons control to potentially nefarious artificial intelligence systems.

What if I would prefer to stay angry and dislike you anyway?

That’s okay. It's music, and you're totally free to decide what you like or dislike! Remember to let others do the same.

Hopefully this FAQ info dump provides some answers for those looking for them. We can appreciate a healthy dose of skepticism, but we're going to keep our energy and focus primarily on continuing to make rockin' music.

For those that will just skip to a video instead, here are some of those:

More videos to come...

Do you have anything else you'd like to add that isn't a response to a question?

Funny you should ask! In fact, yes. Here is something:

As many people do when new fads comes up, we've certainly played with and explored AI generated art and music to see what it can do and how people react to it. It's an evolving landscape out there with new technology constantly popping up and changing how people perceive art and artistic merit. We (and perhaps any of the skeptics out there) can take solace in knowing that Appalachian Anarchy, the musical project that actually gained the most listeners and praise for us so far, is made up of music that was written and recorded entirely without AI from day one.