January 31, 2025
When I went to college, I had a singular dream: to write music for film or video games. I couldn’t imagine a career outside of that. However, once I earned my degree, I realized I didn’t have the connections to break into the industry. As a broke college graduate living far from the major centers for film and gaming, I begrudgingly entered the workforce with a degree that I was confident people would laugh at.
I knew my “making stuff up” degree — as one professor called it — had some merit. There were soft skills I developed as a music major that I could use, but it wasn’t until I started studying UX that I saw how, in some ways, my dream career had prepared me for my real one.
As a UX designer, one of the most important things I do is talk to users to understand what they do and do not want. Composers often face a similar predicament: writing for instruments you’re less familiar with (for example, brass and winds) means you must rely on more than just the instrumentation textbooks, engraving software, and professors. You need to talk to your intended players, or else you may learn the hard way that what you’ve written isn’t possible, as I did. This early communication helps avoid rewrites and fosters a relationship with players, much like talking to users can help foster trust. Take a listen to the song below, see if you can guess how not talking to my users impacted the music.
In addition to speaking to actual users, my time as a composition student taught me one of the most critical lessons in UX: that I am not the user. To rely on my expertise with my instrument or my writing alone could result in music that fell flat in the hands of a performer. Conversely, as I was a decent violist but not focused on it, I often found the music I wrote too hard for my skill level. I did my best to put myself in the shoes of my intended users for a better sound.
Iterating is paramount in product design, and composing is the same. From creating abstract sketches of the fore, middle, and background sounds to fine-tuning chords and note lengths in the final mockup, the lifecycle of a single piece is as varied as the lifecycle of product or feature design. Elements can evolve based on aesthetics, user information, scope, or opportunity—for example, a saxophone quartet changing to a string quartet to work with a specific ensemble.
Regarding soft skills, my major provided ample opportunity to recruit teams, balance schedules, and discuss executing a piece in small and large settings. My classmates and I learned to give and receive constructive criticism on our music in a safe space, allowing us time to make changes (or not) before a premiere. When it came to that final performance, composers were required to give a small speech about their pieces, so I learned to talk to the audience as my first stakeholders. No one cared about the diminished seventh chord in the 34th bar; they cared about what the piece meant to the composer. Those speeches allowed me to express my thoughts on the piece and share that music with less fear.
Years later, I wouldn’t trade my career in UX for the world. While I never achieved that teenage dream on a large scale, I still use my degree to write music for smaller games I make with my friends. But what is the actual value of my college education? Setting me up for success on a path I didn’t even know existed.
