Over the past few years, I’ve been learning to play the guitar and sing. It’s been a fun hobby and break from programming. However, the deeper I dive into the world of music, the more I realize that there’s a lot of parallels between programming and music composition.

It got me thinking, is there something fundamentally similar about engineering and music composition? I’ve been coding for years and dabbling with music production on the side, but I’d never consciously connected these two creative outlets.

This esay is a brief one. I want to share some of the parallels I’ve been thinking about between programming and music composition.

(oh and ps thats my beautiful bass in the picture)

The Basics: Syntax and Notes

Every programmer knows the pain of a missing semicolon. Or a misplaced curly brace. Or an unexpected colon that somehow crashes your entire application at 2 AM when you just want to go to sleep.

In programming, we start by learning the syntax of the language. This is the grammar of the language. It’s the rules that you have to follow to write code.

Music is no different. Music at its most basic level is a language. It has a syntax and grammar. That being the notes and rhythms that are the basic building blocks of a song.

Accidentally play a note out of scale? That’s a syntax error. And oddly enough, its just as obvious (and annoying).

The difference is that when your code has a syntax error, you get a helpful message like:

1
SyntaxError: unexpected EOF while parsing

And when you play the wrong note, it just sounds bad. You’re not quiet sure what went wrong, but you know it’s not right. Once you take a deeper look, you realize that the note was out of scale, just like you realized that the missing semicolon was in the wrong place.

Building Blocks: From Functions to Chord Progressions

If syntax is the raw grammar, then functions and classes in code are like chords and melodies in music. They’re the fundamental building blocks that get combined into increasingly complex structures.

Consider this common pattern in engineering:

1. Write atomic functions that do one thing well
2. Combine those into more complex functions
3. Group related functions into classes or modules
4. Organize those into services or applications
5. Connect multiple services into systems

Now look at how music composition works:

1. Choose individual notes
2. Combine notes into chords
3. Arrange chords into progressions
4. Build progressions into verses and choruses
5. Assemble these parts into complete songs

I’m not saying that writing a microservice is exactly like composing a heartfelt ballad. But the mental process of assembling smaller parts into larger, coherent wholes is remarkably similar.

Both also involve the concept of “state” and “flow” - in code, you’re tracking variables and execution paths; in music, you’re managing tension, release, and emotional development.

Frameworks: Don’t Reinvent the Wheel (or the 12-Bar Blues)

Here’s where things get really interesting. In software, we’ve developed frameworks like Rails, React, and Airflow to solve common problems. These frameworks embody patterns that have proven effective time and again.

Similarly, music has developed its own “frameworks”:

• The 12-bar blues progression (I-IV-I-V-IV-I)
• The ubiquitous pop structure (Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Chorus)
• The “four chords of pop” (I-V-vi-IV) that power about 90% of Billboard hits

Just like how using DBT or Airflow lets you focus on your data problems instead of reinventing scheduling and transformation patterns, using established musical frameworks lets composers focus on melody and expression instead of reinventing harmony.

Both disciplines have their purists too. There’s always that engineer who insists on writing everything from scratch because “frameworks are bloated” - just like there’s always that musician who thinks using a popular chord progression is “selling out.” Meanwhile, the rest of us areactually shipping products and releasing songs people enjoy (well I haven’t released any songs but you get the idea…).

The truth is, frameworks exist for a reason. They’re a way to standardize and simplify the process of creating something complex. Once you’ve learned the framework, you can always break it or create your own. But writing React from scratch without ever having even used it sounds like a nightmare- music is no different.

Breaking the Rules

The best engineers know precisely when to sidestep a framework’s conventions for performance or clarity. Similarly, the most innovative musicians know exactly when to throw in that unexpected chord or irregular time signature to create something fresh.

As Miles Davis supposedly said: “It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.” Which sounds suspiciously like what my old engineering manager told me about code: “The best line of code is the one you didn’t have to write.”

Now I’m not an expert in music theory. I can code reasonably well, and I can play just enough guitar to be happy. But these parallels seem too striking to be coincidental. There’s something about how the human brain organizes complex systems - whether they’re computational or musical that follows similar patterns. Maybe a thought for another time.

Closing thoughts: Maybe I should start a band called “Runtime Error.”