The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.
-Donald Knuth
Nashville is well known for being “Music City”. Like many, I moved here to pursue a career in music, but how did I find myself in tech as a software engineer? The path was somewhat improvised. I used to think my life was going to follow a pretty clear path, but it has been much more open-ended and unwritten (like the cover photo) than I would have expected!
When I was interviewing with Asurion, I had mentioned to one of the interviewers that I was very involved with music: playing piano and guitar, writing, teaching, even producing. In fact, at the time I was currently working as a software developer at a music-based learning company that used music videos to teach math. The interviewer related to me that there were many musicians that worked at Asurion as software engineers, and that they had done pretty well. I agreed with him, thinking it might help me get the job.
That being said, there are a few common assumptions about being a musician that may or may not be accurate, one in particular is that we are good at math. I can assure you, I am mediocre at best when it comes to math. However, what I would like to do is start spreading the notion that musicians make good software engineers!
This article is takes a look at my own story and a small group of software engineers that work at Asurion that are also musicians. I’m hoping it not only puts the spotlight on this general group, but that it might be encouraging to others that come from a creative background, particularly musical, that are interested in breaking into tech.
An Improvised Path
I think I was a pretty boring kid. Imaginative, but not with too many interests other than video games. It wasn’t until middle school when I started playing guitar and piano that I learned what it was to have a passion. From about 14 onward, all I could really think about being was playing music and being some sort of professional musician someday. I played 4, 5, 6 hours a day. I played at church, I played with my friends in the garage, I played in my bedroom quietly late into the night. When I was a junior in high school I decided I wanted to go to earn a music degree with the hope of gaining the skills and connections I needed to become a film composer. The intensity only increased, I played more, wrote more, and practiced more than ever. After I graduated I decided I wanted to move to Nashville to be around a more immersive music scene and pursue a master’s degree at Belmont University. I did just that. However, about halfway through my degree I started to explore programming because I had a crazy idea in my head that I could make a computer understand emotions and turn it into music.
My only previous experience with programming was using the Automater tool on macOS to batch rename a set of files and brief exposure to the Max/MSP programming language that by one of my music composition professors. I had known one friend that was working as a developer, but my interest expanded my partner at the time decided to enroll in coding bootcamp here in Nashville. While she was studying I saw glimpses here and there of what web development was and being a curious person I asked as many questions as I could. Coincidentally, I had a thesis project to do for my master’s degree, and I became obsessed with the ideas of music psychology in relation to emotional expression and perception and the musical structures that convey these emotions. And then I had an idea: can I incorporate a computer as a semi-intelligent agent exploring these topics? I spent over a year exploring these topics, learning about programming, machine learning, the psychological models of emotion, and created EmojiMusicInteractive, a musical computer system that detects emotions in facial expressions plays, modifies, or generates music based on the incoming emotional expressions. It was so much fun and I explored a pattern of thinking that was so new, but that gave me a similar sense of fulfilled curiosity, in some ways deeper, that I had felt when writing or arranging music. I learned so much! And needless to say, I was hooked on programming from there. Within weeks of my graduation I was enrolled in Nashville Software School’s web development bootcamp here in Nashville.
Fast forward to today, I have been doing this professionally for a little over 3 years at a company called Muzology and Asurion and have worked on a variety of projects from computational music research, mobile iOS development, and web development. I am currently a Software Engineer 2 at Asurion working on the Connected Home Web team. My musical background certainly led me to this point and I am still very involved with music today with my band, Nite Tides, my students, and my production work. I also strongly believe my musical nature affects my thinking when it comes to software development. That’s just one story though. I was told did that there were many other musicians working here at Asurion so I reached out to a few to get some different perspectives.
Meet The Band At Asurion
Stephen Parsons, a Software Engineer 4 on Platform Team for Horizon Web developed a passion for music in his teenage years: “I started playing guitar around age 13 after discovering the band Green Day. Around that time I didn’t do much else except play guitar everyday, discovering more music and eventually starting bands with my friends in school.” He also had someone close to him expose him to software development and decided to make the jump via the coding bootcamp path; “I was frustrated and felt stuck in my pervious career and working as a musician, and I knew I wanted a change. My brother was doing his computer science degree (and works for Microsoft now) and after asking him of advice he suggested checking out a coding bootcamp, specifically CodingDojo. I signed up, quit my job and immediately started learning the fundamentals of web dev, html, css, javascript, etc. before starting the course.”
Check out Steven’s band Sun Casino
Like myself, Sam Bender an Software Engineer 1 on the Replacement’s team and MaryEllen a Software Engineer 3 in the enterprise architecture department studied music formally in college. Sam studied a dual major in both Computer Science and Viola performance (at the time of writing he is currently on an East Coast tour with his friend’s band). Mary Ellen “studied both classical voice, jazz, and music business while playing in 3 bands on weekends”. She “low key started coding my band's website in my free time. Fell in love first with CSS and front end basics. Then started teaching myself JavaScript via CodeAcademy and Treehouse… Eventually this led to attending a code bootcamp in 2015, followed by a job offer at an ad agency as a web dev.” A similar story to my own.
Checkout MaryEllen’s music
Here's a recent project Sam worked on.
It is not uncommon for musicians that were working professionally prior to software engineering to take break into the field via a bootcamp, however many developer-musicians studied computer science while maintaining their interest in music independently. Oded Welgreen, a Senior Principal Software Engineer who produces generative music writes, “I was always good with computers, starting with the logo language at kindergarten. Played a lot of video games and learned Pascal in high school. Studying computer science felt like a natural continuation.” Rohit Sam a Principal Software Engineer and guitar player expressed a similar sentiment, “I have always tinkered with computers since I was younger. Taught myself how to "program" in VB/Autoit to automate stuff on the computer. Thinking back to my scripting days, a career in tech was always a natural and expected end goal.” Madelyn Reyes an Software Engineer 2 that produces music under the name Madebit stumbled upon software engineering in college, “I randomly interned at a computer repair shop before i started college where I enjoyed fixing computers and thought i might like to study IT in college. I signed up for computer science not really understanding what it was - my only requirement for college is that it had to be something that was challenging, and computer science fit the bill. So I continued with the major, alongside doing internships (some in IT, help-desk work and others in actual programming) and extra programming projects on the side.”
Checkout Madebit and Oded's Music
This Is Your Brain on Music
I find that writing code engages my mind in a way similar to writing or arranging music. I find an abstract correlation between being a musician and a software engineer. Each participant had their own take on the relationship between the two parts of their minds, with some seeing a clearer connection than others.
Madelyn - “There’s a lot of studies that have shown that people who enjoy making music are drawn to professions like software engineering and similar fields. The big correlation i see is in the fun of problem solving, creative expression, and autonomy - whether you're making a piece of music or writing code, you're creating something thats not really tangible in a physical sense. You can't touch or feel a song/code in the same way that you could touch a chair or a sculpture, and I'm certain that it occupies a similar brain space.”
Mary Ellen - “Using both parts of the brain at the same time is required for both. The logical steps mixed with the creative problem solving, the improvisation, and critical thinking, and knowing there is more than one solution. Especially music theory.”
Sam - "I’m not sure if I’ve personally noticed a lot of direct correlation between my music and engineering lives, but for me it means that I’m able to engage all areas of my brain in a given week. When I finish up with work, I can turn to music, and I find the whole arrangement to be very fulfilling.”
Rohit - “The creative aspects of software engineering sometimes remind me of a well written piece of music. But that mirage quickly fades when I look at actual production code. Perhaps the tinkering with the guitar and pedals and achieving the perfect tone can be correlated to debugging a software problem until I solve it? But then again, I've never pulled my own hair out because I couldn't nail a tone – production code on the other hand is a different story.”
Stephen - "There is definitely a correlation, although it may be different for lots of people. Both music and engineering require creativity. In western contemporary music you have only 12 tones but an endless number of possible ways to utilize them when writing a piece or song, where many rules and ideas exist on what is pleasing and what should or shouldn’t be done. In coding, you have a similar framework with which to solve an engineering problem. Raising a PR is almost like performing a new song in front of an audience for the first time, you have to prepare yourself for feedback and be open minded. In both disciplines it is also encouraged to borrow ideas from others!”
Oded focuses in on modular synthesis - "I 100% see correlation between modular synthesizers and software engineering. Both involve an element of exploration ("what would happen if I do this") and exploitation ("I want to this, how would I do it"). Both involve using building blocks to build an "architecture". Even debugging is similar in nature (using oscilloscope for "logging", systematically following the flow of the system to pinpoint where the problem is). I would also equate playing in a band to working in a team - giving space for others to express themselves, enhancing each others strengths, strong communication etc.”
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many perspectives when it comes to musicianship and software engineering! Regardless, I think there is a case to be made that musicians, regardless or background, have patterns of thinking that lend themselves well to being software engineers. I hope whether you’re a musician that is looking into becoming a software engineer that this article was inspiring, but also if you’re a musician-engineer already I hope you’re discovering there may be more like you than you realize.
Coda
If you are a musician-developer, I highly suggest working at Asurion. I've found so many people here to be supportive of the me and my band from seeing our shows, buying our merch, and even being asked to play for Asurion events!
Top comments (1)
I'm just shocked by your way! So people say the truth, you never know where the next choice will take you because fate is unpredictable. I am a musician myself and I would love to visit Nashville! Now I also decided to take up coding, because I always wanted to write utilities that could make my musical life easier. Your story is a huge motivation for me. Thanks a lot!
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