---
title: The Rhythm of Patterns
osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/conferences/seagl2017/program/proposals/350
beginning: '2017-10-07T14:00:00.000-07:00'
end: '2017-10-07T14:50:00.000-07:00'
presenters:
- name: Susan Harris
  osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/users/616
  gravatar_id: 85e4d118bbf6b514eec28ad4e2c19706
  biography: |-
    Susan Harris is a piano teacher and pianist. She began studying the piano in England, at the age of seven, later receiving a BA (Hons) music degree and then a Post Grad in Music Education from Reading University.
    As well as her degree in music and Post Grad in Education, Susan is a Licentiate of the Guildhall School of Music, London.
    For many years Susan taught in schools including orchestra and choir, as well as piano. Her Ofsted reports rated her as ‘Outstanding’.
---

Human beings have evolved to recognise patterns: In weather, in plants, in stellar movements.  We do this intuitively to make order out of the abstract. Patterns are so ingrained that, even without knowing, we imbue patterns in everything we create - to make order out of what would otherwise be chaos.

In this talk I’ll use music and rhythm to introduce you to the power of patterns and how they affect your thinking and the software you build and use. There will be a brief demo, and then the audience and I will create a Balinese Monkey Chant together to demonstrate how simple patterns interweave to make more complex creations and how you can apply this thinking to software development.

You’ll learn:

- The shared pattern characteristics of music and software.

- How simple patterns layer into complex creations.

- Balinese Monkey music is fun.
