The Joys of Music Continued: One of the Orginal Coding Systems

As I continue to write and practice on my trumpet, I wanted to provide yet another "random thought." I had learned to read music as a teen in the wonderful Theodore Roosevelt marching band and symphony, but I didn't think about it much -I simply learned and played... and then all the band members got to hang-out and have a fun time together. 

Image of New York sheet music makers. 

But, as an adult, I now realize that music is a bit like computer code! And it was invented and produced centuries ago. Have you heard of Bach, Mozart?... Those guys put their music on paper, so we, in the Twenty-First century could still hear it, and it could still be played by expert musicians. 

As I wrote in a previous post, I recently went to a workshop at Google Cloud to play around with their codes and programing. Also, I took a linguistics course in grad school at DePaul. And, now, I'm re-learning to read sheet music. All of these forms of communication are meant to assist us humans in making something happen: maybe it's playing a fun song on your instrument, perhaps it's speaking to a lovely Italian woman you just met, maybe it's something as simple as programing your software system to know there is going be an outage today at 5 PM sharp, and you better log-out and save your work before then!

Glen Miller's, "In the Mood".

But, either way, music is like code. It's a language we read and understand to make cool, and fun, music! In fact, before most people even knew what a computer was, there was a big "coding" industry in New York City, and likely other cities across the United States. The most famous sellers of sheet music were in Manhattan, in a neighborhood called "Tin-Pan Alley." People waited in lines to get sheet music. With the middle-class growing, and the ability for normal (non-millionaires) to buy instruments, such as violins, trumpets, pianos, etc... Everyone needed sheet music to play from. Everyone wanted fun music!

This is something fun, and helpful, that all Americans took part in. Whites, Blacks, Native Americans, and everyone else took part in making the US a very musical place! And, they basically memorized code, because sheet music is basically code for a song. And other countries, outside of the US, were making music themselves! 

I'll end by saying on quick anecdote... I signed-up a talented young woman for medical school at the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago. This is one of the best-of-the-best institutions in the world for science and medicine. Her undergraduate degree was in music... and, I know she went on to the best doctor and scientist! And knowing music helped ;)