For a long time, I treated my interests in technology and creativity like they belonged in separate rooms.
There was the technical side of me:
Software engineering.
Web development.
Systems architecture.
Game engines.
Infrastructure.
Electronics.
Security.
Tools.
And then there was the creative side:
Music.
Songwriting.
Guitars.
Sound.
Stories.
Design.
Worldbuilding.
Making things simply because I wanted them to exist.
I kept trying to figure out which one I was supposed to be.
Was I a software engineer who happened to make music?
Was I a musician who knew how to code?
Was CitrusWorx the "serious" technical work while Blackwater Sound was the creative side project?
Eventually I realized that the question itself was wrong.
They were never supposed to be separate.
Technology Was Becoming My Identity
I love technology.
That hasn't changed.
I love opening something up and figuring out how it works.
I love understanding systems.
I love asking why an architecture was designed a certain way, why a circuit behaves the way it does, why a programming language made a particular tradeoff, or why an old amplifier sounds different from a modern one.
I can happily spend hours thinking about software architecture, operating systems, networking, electronics, programming languages, rendering engines, distributed systems, or some obscure piece of computer history.
But somewhere along the way, technology went from being something I used to becoming something I felt obligated to center my identity around.
And that distinction matters.
Because I'm not interested in technology simply for technology's sake.
I'm interested in what technology allows people to make.
That realization changed how I think about nearly everything I'm building.
The Artist Gets to Drive Now
I've started thinking about myself differently.
My artistic and creative side gets to take the reins.
My technical side doesn't disappear.
It becomes the superpower.
Instead of asking:
What technology should I build?
I'm more interested in asking:
What do I want to create, and what technology would make that possible?
That might sound like a small difference.
For me, it isn't.
It changes the entire direction of the work.
The destination is no longer dictated by the technology.
The destination is dictated by the thing I want to make.
The engineer figures out how to get there.
Blackwater Sound + CitrusWorx
This realization also helped me understand something about the different projects I've been building.
Blackwater Sound and CitrusWorx aren't competing identities.
They belong together.
Blackwater Sound is where a lot of the musical and creative work lives.
Within that world are projects like:
- berylaudio — audio software, plugins, pedals, and tools
- WINK Guitar — guitars, basses, mandolins, education, and instrument making
- LIME Amplification — guitar amplifiers and cabinets
And then there is CitrusWorx, where much of my engineering, software, systems thinking, research, and technology work lives.
Those worlds don't need a wall between them.
In fact, separating them makes both of them weaker.
An amplifier is art and engineering.
A guitar is art and engineering.
A pedal is art and engineering.
A synthesizer is art and engineering.
A recording studio is art and engineering.
An audio plugin is art and engineering.
Even the modern music industry itself is inseparable from technology.
The history of music is full of people abusing, modifying, misusing, inventing, rebuilding, and reimagining technology in the pursuit of a sound that didn't exist yet.
That is much closer to the kind of technologist I want to be.
Kiwi Engine Still Matters
This doesn't mean I'm abandoning software.
Quite the opposite.
I'm returning to Kiwi Engine with a clearer reason for why I want it to exist.
Kiwi Engine is my web application engine.
The goal is for the sites, tools, applications, and digital experiences throughout this ecosystem to be built on technology that I understand and can shape.
But Kiwi Engine no longer needs to be the center of the universe.
It is infrastructure.
It is a workshop.
It is a toolbench.
It is something I can use to build the experiences surrounding the things I actually care about.
Maybe that means building software for musicians.
Maybe it powers an interactive guitar-building course.
Maybe it becomes the foundation for an amplifier design notebook.
Maybe it runs tools for organizing recording sessions.
Maybe it powers documentation for an open hardware project.
Maybe it becomes part of an ecosystem for musicians who want more ownership over their creative tools.
Maybe none of those ideas look exactly the way I imagine them today.
That's fine.
The important thing is that the technology is serving the creative work instead of the creative work becoming an excuse to build technology.
I Want to Talk About Things That Make Noise
I also realized something about what I actually enjoy writing and talking about.
I don't want every article I write to be:
"Here are ten JavaScript tricks."
"Here's another framework comparison."
"Here's how I configured Kubernetes."
There's nothing wrong with those articles.
I'll probably still write some of them.
But I also want to write about why a particular guitar pickup sounds the way it does.
I want to explore what happens inside a tube amplifier.
I want to talk about distortion circuits.
I want to tear apart pedals and understand their topology.
I want to study recording techniques.
I want to explore the history of instruments.
I want to talk about the technology that changed music.
I want to study the technology behind famous recordings.
I want to understand why certain pieces of gear became culturally important.
I want to build audio software and then explain exactly how it works.
I want to make instruments.
I want to write songs.
I want to create sounds that didn't exist before.
And yes, somewhere in the middle of all of that, I will probably write a ridiculous amount of code.
That sounds much more like me.
Creative Engineering
Maybe the best term I have for all of this is creative engineering.
Engineering without creativity becomes optimization without direction.
Creativity without execution can remain an idea forever.
Put the two together and things start happening.
You can imagine a sound and then design the circuit that creates it.
You can imagine an instrument and then learn the woodworking, electronics, acoustics, manufacturing, and design required to build it.
You can imagine a piece of software and then write the engine underneath it.
You can imagine a world and then write the stories, compose the soundtrack, create the artwork, and build the systems that let someone experience it.
That's the intersection I want to live in.
Not purely art.
Not purely technology.
Making things.
Technology Is an Instrument
A guitar player doesn't usually build their identity around the screwdriver they used to adjust the bridge.
A carpenter doesn't wake up every morning wondering whether they are primarily a table-saw person or a bandsaw person.
The tool matters.
Mastery matters.
Understanding the tool deeply matters.
But the tool exists in service of the work.
I'm starting to think about software the same way.
Programming languages are tools.
Frameworks are tools.
Cloud platforms are tools.
AI is a tool.
Electronics are tools.
CAD is a tool.
Manufacturing is a tool.
Kiwi Engine is a tool.
And I absolutely want to understand my tools.
I want to modify them.
I want to build my own when necessary.
I want to know what is happening underneath the abstraction.
That curiosity isn't going anywhere.
But the tool doesn't get to decide what I make.
I'm Still an Engineer
There's a funny thing about saying that technology isn't my identity anymore.
It doesn't make me less technical.
If anything, I think it gives me permission to become more technical.
Because now the learning has somewhere to go.
DSP isn't just mathematics.
It's how I create an audio plugin.
Electronics isn't just circuit theory.
It's how I design a pedal or amplifier.
Web development isn't just another application stack.
It's how I build the platform around my creative work.
Embedded programming isn't just firmware.
It's how I make physical objects respond to musicians.
Acoustics isn't just physics.
It's how I understand an instrument.
Manufacturing isn't just production engineering.
It's how an idea becomes something another person can hold in their hands.
Those connections make me want to learn more, not less.
Coming Back Different
I took some time away from developing Kiwi Engine.
I took some time away from writing.
At first, that felt like I had stopped.
Now I think I was recalibrating.
I'm coming back with a different hierarchy.
The artist decides what should exist.
The designer determines what it should feel like.
The engineer figures out how to make it work.
The researcher figures out what we can learn from everyone who came before us.
The craftsperson builds it.
And sometimes all of those people happen to be the same person.
That's the part I'm finally learning to embrace.
I still love software.
I still love systems.
I still want to build Kiwi Engine.
I still want to explore strange technical rabbit holes.
But I also want to build guitars.
I want to make amplifiers.
I want to design pedals.
I want to create plugins.
I want to write songs.
I want to study music history.
I want to understand why things sound the way they do.
I want to make things that are technical, artistic, useful, strange, beautiful, complicated, simple, loud, quiet, digital, analog, physical, and occasionally completely unnecessary.
Because sometimes "I wonder if I can build this" is reason enough to start.
Technology isn't going away.
It just isn't sitting in the driver's seat anymore.
The artist is driving now.
The engineer is riding shotgun.
And I think we're going to build some interesting things.
Top comments (0)