Student recognizes shared traits in music, coding

From her first violin lesson at age 3 to years of concert recitals and performances throughout high school, junior Jillian Khoo had always imagined studying music in college. But her plans to become a musician changed when she discovered her second passion in high school: computer science. Now a Viterbi School of Engineering scholar who still participates in musical performances, Khoo is able to make time for both of her passions.

It was upon taking her first computer science class in high school that Khoo realized the traits she had used to excel in music, such as recognizing patterns, could be applied to computer science. 

“The whole idea is that you can have this big picture in your mind but you really need to be able to zoom in on those smaller details like a single function within a larger program, or a single note or phrase within a larger piece,” said Khoo, a computer science major.

Khoo continues to combine creativity with science by contributing to STEM communities on campus, including AthenaHacks and Code the Change, and participating in instrumental groups such as the Thornton Symphony and Google orchestras.

Last fall, Khoo was also named the first USC Neo Scholar nominated by a past internship. Since joining the scholar program, Khoo said Neo, a scouting network aimed at helping young engineers jumpstart their careers by connecting them with startups and investors, has been helpful in providing insight on prospective careers scholars are considering. 

“Everyone has been extremely friendly and extremely helpful with providing me and the other students with super helpful career advice on things we should learn or look into,” Khoo said. “It’s super inspiring to get to talk to these people and hear what their take is on the future of computer science and what they’re doing to kind of pay it forward.”

Despite pursuing computer science full time, Khoo has not abandoned her first love of music and continues to cultivate her craft in her free time. Last summer, she played for the company orchestra during her internship at Google. During her freshman year, she also played in the Thornton Symphony as the only non-music major. 

Shawn Shamsian, a computer science professor who witnessed firsthand Khoo’s skill with computer science when she was a student in his algorithms design class, said he was not surprised that Khoo was also involved in musical performance. Khoo is now a TA for his “Introductions to Algorithms and Theory of Computing” course.

Shamsian said he had seen studies calling the process of coding and music similar in design. In one study conducted by the Huffington Post in 2016, researchers found that attention to detail and innate perfectionism were important characteristics of excellent coders and musicians.

“In the old days when there weren’t a lot of people that knew about coding, people actually recognized that musicians can become very good coders,” Shamsian said. “The way your mind works when you understand music, it translates well to basically write structured code.”

During her freshman year, Khoo was selected to participate in Hack Music L.A., a weekend-long hackathon in the Walt Disney Concert Hall where her team, made up of artists, musicians and technologists from across the United States, created a visual performance dependent on changes in the musical piece, including volume and pitch. 

“A common thing that modern audiences are struggling with when they go to a classical music performance is that they don’t know where to look,” Khoo said. “It sounds nice, but they just need a little more visual stimulation. Based on the performance that was being given, we were able to take in all of the performance data and turn it into a visual light show that was completely generated by the music.”

Michael Shindler, a former USC professor, hired Khoo as a course producer, a student who provides additional help in labs and office hours, after she excelled in his “Discrete Methods in Computer Science” course. Unsurprised by Khoo’s interest in music performance, Shindler said he understands a critical similarity between learning the two subjects that explains Khoo’s passion for each. 

“[In computer science, there’s] a way you come up with the right numbers by following directions and then there’s a way where you understand why you do the steps you do,” Shindler said. “There’s something similar with music — if you are playing piano, you can move your fingers to the right keys and press the right pedals at the right time to produce the desired sound.”

As she finds the intersection between two seemingly opposite subjects, Khoo urges students who are interested in two unrelated fields to identify a problem in one field that can be solved with tools from the other. 

“It’s not like you can just wake up one morning and say ‘Oh, I want to combine music and technology. Step zero is ‘How do you want to connect these?’” Khoo said. “The most important thing is looking at a field like the arts and trying to find a problem that you think you can solve with your other fields … looking around and seeing where there are gaps in that field and how you can contribute with your outside perspective.”