Music and lyrics and code: GEEK CHOIR

by Jenn Webb

If the popularity of Geek Choir at various tech-related
conferences is any indication, there’s a substantial correlation
between producing music — whether vocally or with an instrument —
and coding.

Michael Brewer ((a)operatic), application programmer specialist
at the University of Georgia and a speaker at OSCON 2011, got the
official Geek Choir sessions started at the Open Source Bridge and
O’Reilly OSCON conferences. In a recent interview, he discussed how
the choir came about and how music and coding complement each
other.

How do music and technical aptitude intersect?

Michael Brewer: Since Geek Choir got accepted, I’ve been hearing
a lot of anecdotal evidence of a high crossover between music and
geek aptitude. Of course, people have been talking about the
math-music connection since “Gödel, Escher, Bach.” Recent studies
have again shown connections between early exposure to music and
math ability, although it’s not exactly what we think of as the
“Mozart Effect.”

I tend to view it as a combination of pattern recognition and
the ability to organize and reproduce thoughts about larger, more
abstract concepts and their executions. Also, the production of
sound using tools at hand — including vocal chords — is similar, in
a sense, to producing code with software or hacking other
projects.

We are a species that bonds with our tools in unusual ways.
Correlation doesn’t prove causation, though — there’s a bit of a
chicken-and-egg problem in figuring out if geeks are good at music
or if musicians are good at being geeks.

What is a “Geek Choir,” and how did it get started?

Michael Brewer: I attended several OSCONs in the early-to-mid
2000s. I noticed several music jam sessions, as well as the
popularity of the Gibson guitar booth in the exhibit hall one year.
Folks were jamming on those guitars for hours.

At the first Open Source Bridge Conference, I suggested a Geek
Choir session for the “unconference” on the last day. We started
with fairly few people, but once we started singing — and people in
the halls heard us and “voted with their feet” — we more than
tripled our attendance in 15 minutes. The next year, Geek Choir
made it into the OSBridge main conference. We had a very successful
and enjoyable session, mixing experienced singers with absolute
newbies.

In your OSCON session description, it says there’s no advanced
prep for the session choirs — why did you decide to go that route,
and what benefits does a no-prep environment create?

Michael Brewer: It makes it easier on the newbies if everyone is
getting introduced to the music at the same time. Also, it means
that I have to be sure in my preparation to select music that is
both accessible for inexperienced singers and worthwhile for
experienced musicians. It’s a good engineering
challenge.