What Learning Classical Guitar Lessons Taught Me About Writing Clean Code

As a software developer who spends hours in front of a screen, I picked up classical guitar lessons as a hobby to unwind. What started as a creative escape quickly became something more: a surprising source of insight into how I write and structure code. The more time I spent practising music, the more parallels I noticed between playing a classical piece and building clean, readable software. While the disciplines are different in their outputs, they share a surprising number of underlying principles.

Here’s what classical guitar lessons taught me about writing clean code—and why other developers may benefit from stepping outside their comfort zone too.

Structured Foundations Build Lasting Skill

When I first picked up the guitar, my instinct was to jump straight into songs I liked. But much like jumping into a complex framework without understanding the basics, that approach led to frustration. Classical guitar requires a solid foundation: finger placement, scales, posture, timing. It’s systematic, structured, and sometimes repetitive—but it builds lasting skill.

Similarly, in programming, we don’t start by writing entire applications. We begin with syntax, conditionals, loops, and data structures. Skipping these fundamentals often results in brittle, unreadable code.

What helped was following a clear learning path. I found that Marks Guitar Lessons provided that kind of progressive structure. Each step built on the last, much like how coding bootcamps or CS fundamentals layer knowledge in stages.

This structured progression reminded me of a concept discussed in Clean Code Principles Every Developer Should Know, where foundational understanding trumps shortcuts when striving for code clarity.

Repetition and Refinement: Practice Mirrors Debugging

In classical guitar, there’s no shortcut to mastering a piece—you repeat phrases, slow them down, and refine. You might play one bar 50 times just to get the timing right. And when it finally clicks, it feels earned.

That process reminded me of debugging and test-driven development. When you're refining a function or troubleshooting a persistent issue, you don't rewrite everything—you isolate the problem, examine it slowly, and test fixes methodically.

Practising guitar taught me to value incremental improvement. It reinforced the idea that excellence doesn’t come from rewriting things in a rush but from slow, purposeful iteration. I even started applying a “musician’s mindset” to code reviews—checking rhythm (flow), tempo (efficiency), and harmony (readability).

Reading Music Feels Like Reading Legacy Code

When I first opened a classical guitar score, I was completely lost. It was like reading a foreign language—symbols everywhere, odd notations, strange rhythms. But with time and practice, I started seeing patterns: familiar chord shapes, rhythm cues, key changes. Eventually, it began to make sense.

Reading someone else’s code—especially legacy code—can feel just as overwhelming. Variables are poorly named, the logic feels disjointed, and there’s no clear documentation. But just like with sheet music, patterns start to emerge with time.

A post I found helpful while reflecting on this was How To Read Someone Else’s Code, which outlines how to decode and rebuild your mental model of unfamiliar software. The same principles apply to music: chunking information, identifying motifs, and mentally mapping structure.

Precision Matters—In Code and Music

One of the most humbling things about classical guitar is how unforgiving it can be. A slightly misplaced finger? Buzz. A rushed tempo? Disjointed melody. Every small mistake is audible. That forced me to slow down, be deliberate, and focus on accuracy over speed.

The same goes for clean code. One mistyped operator or misaligned loop can break an entire feature. Small details—naming conventions, consistent formatting, line length—may not cause syntax errors, but they heavily impact how readable and maintainable code becomes.

Learning guitar trained me to be more mindful. It wasn't just about finishing a song—it was about playing it cleanly. Likewise, in coding, it's not just about getting the output to work—it's about whether someone else (or future you) can understand and extend that code without fear.

Creativity Within Constraints Encourages Better Thinking

One of the most interesting lessons from classical music is how creativity often thrives under strict constraints. You’re not improvising; you’re interpreting a composition. But even within those bounds, there's room for expression: phrasing, dynamics, subtle timing choices. Mastery lies in knowing where to add personality without breaking the structure.

Software development operates similarly. Whether you're following API standards or framework conventions, you're often working within predefined limits. But those boundaries aren’t a burden—they’re a canvas.

Building side projects while taking classical guitar lessons helped reinforce this. I even built a simple progress tracker app for my music practice—following RESTful principles and structuring data like a composition. Working within the rules didn’t limit my creativity; it made me more thoughtful about it.

For more on this topic, DEV has a great read titled The Beauty of Constraints in Software Engineering, which explores how structure can drive innovation.

The Bonus: A Newfound Mental Break

Aside from the technical parallels, classical guitar lessons offered me something deeper: a genuine mental reset. The practice required full attention, a break from screens, and a different kind of problem-solving. It helped reduce burnout and brought joy back into my routine.

I’d encourage any developer—especially those feeling creatively stuck or overwhelmed—to explore something physical, focused, and structured outside of their field. Whether it's guitar, painting, or woodworking, there’s so much to be gained from cross-training your brain.

And if you're curious about starting with classical guitar, I'd point you toward Marks Guitar Lessons. The structure, clarity, and progression felt very familiar to anyone who's learned programming from the ground up.

Conclusion

Clean code and classical guitar may seem like distant disciplines, but at their core, they both demand discipline, clarity, and thoughtful structure. Practising one has improved the other—and more importantly, it's reminded me that learning outside your industry can transform how you work within it.