Music meets Code

My first Blog ever! My name is Chris and I work as a musician as my day job. (If i can put it that way). In reality though, there are no fixed hours in the life of a musician. You take students, play on some gigs, practice your craft, arrange music, etc and manage your own schedule. It is pretty flexible I would say.

I started the post baccalaureate computer science program in OSU back in 2018 after much deliberation. (I graduated with a music degree from Berklee college of music and I didn’t know if I had the aptitude and foundation to be successful in this program. Nevertheless, OSU accepted me!)

The original desire to take on this program came from a humble beginning. When arranging music, it is important to be able to do it fast and well. Doing it fast just means that there are more opportunities for tweaking and clients like quick iterations (pretty much like the agile idea that I learned in CS). Very often this also means whether you get the job or not.

As I take on more arranging jobs, there are some settings and “decision making” that I find myself constantly doing repeatedly. In terms of time, the actual arranging and “music” part, I would say is probably only 50% of my time.

Having absolutely no knowledge or directions, I started googling for ways to optimize my job and after bumping around from simple youtube instructions to complicated API documents (which I have no idea what they meant then), some kind soul told me that if I wanted to achieve what I wanted, I have to know some programming – and this is where my journey in OSU begun!

I initially just wanted 1-2 classes as a quick fix to what I wanted to achieve but as I took on more classes starting from CS161/162, I find myself getting more addicted to learning more on how computers work. And as I get to know more “CS geeks” as friends, from the water-cooler talks, I realized that having a CS degree could actually open up more opportunities for a “struggling musician” with 2 kids.

Fast forward to Fall 2021, I am now in my final class and my perspective of computers has changed. I completed my original humble objective of automating some of my arrangement work. Now, I am taking on a mobile application project with my team-mates. So exciting!