How music can help us understand blockchain

tl;dr: the concept of “composability” sounds abstract, but it’s not. The power of music and freedom to innovate in it helps us understand what the blockchain movement is all about.

I’m not much of a musician myself, when it comes to instruments. I like banging in a drum circle as much as anyone, but no major skills when it comes to playing anything else.

I did take piano lessons for a while in the 4th grade, so that’s the extent of my background.

However, in the last few months, I have become increasingly aware of the opportunity to understand more about software, code, and smart contracts through music.

But, even more important than that, I have really worked out my auditory muscles in order to learn to appreciate music at a much deeper level.

Classical Music Deep Dive

Most days, the only music I listen to is classical. I find that the absence of lyrics is important for me to get into a flow state. Otherwise, I get distracted.

So, I’ll pick a theme for a day (or a week).

It might be nation-based “Italian classical” that is energetic like Vivaldi’s 4 seasons or “Russian classical” which is more intense like 1812 Overture. Those are generalizations, of course. I’m no expert.

Or I might pick a composer. Or I might pick an instrument to feature such as violin, piano, or harpsichord.

One performance that I particularly remember was highlighted in Tim Ferris’ book, Tools of Titans. Jump ahead to about minute 28 in Martha Agerich’s performance.

I have tried to augment the auditory workout with a bit of intellectual background as well.

I’m reading (well, listening to) David Byrne’s book, How Music Works. He’s already enriched my understanding of the relationship between music and the context in which it is played.

For example, Bach’s work (heavy organ) was written to fit the spaces in which his music typically played (palace salons, etc.) not large concert halls.

Another part of the background involves the Explained series, which has an episode on music.

No one is ready to call me Arthur Copland yet, but I’ve probably listened to 500 hours of classical music in the last few months.

Music, Smart Contracts, and Blockchain

My mind was opened to a connection between music and crypto when I worked with the team at Dapper Labs on an effort connected to the Flow blockchain.

They kept talking about the critical importance of friction-free “composability.”

Eventually, they got through to me.

What this means is that any smart contract, which is computer code, can easily be mixed, matched and combined with any other to create new possibilities.

Think of it this way.

Imagine each key on a piano as a smart contract.

There’s a smart contract for the sound “middle C” and “b flat” etc.

The beauty and power of music is that a piano allows for any of the keys on it to be effortlessly “composed” in any arrangement or order to create a new piece of music, which is information transmitted via sound. (For more on this, see James Gleick’s book.)

Now, imagine that 1/3rd of the keys on the piano required a fee every time that you wanted to use them in a song. If you had to license “d major” in order to use it, how often would it make it into new works?

Not as often.

That’s the benefit of “permissionless innovation.”

Or, imagine that the area where you wanted to store your piano could only fit 1/2 of the keys, so you would have to put a second piano in a different room that had the other half of the keys.

How often or easy would it be to “compose” a new song that took advantage of the keys on piano #2? Not as easy.

In this case, the second piano is a “shard” of the first one.

The argument by the Flow team, which seems to be gaining traction, is that a sharded blockchain, like a piano cut in two, slows down innovation of code because the smart contracts on shard 1 are not easy to compose with the smart contracts on shard 2.

Just like it’s challenging to play a piece of music where half the keys are in one room and half in the other.

Now, take that out to 1000 shards and you see how limited a “non-composable” environment can be.

Music as Open Code

While I’m still very, very, very early in my learning journey on the topic of music, I am starting to understand why Ben Goetzel in “The Singularity is Near” was shown playing the piano as well as talking about the importance of music to him.

Music, like programming, is encoded information. Again, see Gleick.

Depending on what you want to communicate to your audience (and, per Byrne) the context in which you want to communicate it, you’re going to want to have different notes at your disposal.

The more freedom you have to choose a note as a composer from both a cost and a speed perspective, the more opportunities you will have to create something that is a masterpiece.

What blockchain and crypto represents is the belief that the notes of our digital lives (software) should be as open and available as the notes of music.