Why is a Software Architect building an app for Music Teachers?

Hi, I'm Jeremy, and I'm a software developer, or, to put it another way: hi, I'm Jeremy and I'm a professional musician. How both of those things are true explains why I decided to build Terza.

I began playing the cello at the age of 7, taking lessons through the school system in the west of England where I grew up. At 18 I took up a place at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, studying with Clive Greensmith. I then became a graduate student of Marc Johnson's at Northern Illinois University, where I earned my Master of Music degree. Back in England, I built a career as a freelance cellist based in London, performing with many of the UK's top orchestras in concerts across the UK and around the world.

In 2007, my wife and I had our daughter, and I decided I needed to supplement my income. I started studying web development at the Open University, and by 2008 I'd taken my first full-time job as a software developer. I've had a great career since then in big companies and small, first in the UK and then in Canada after moving there in 2009, working my way up to a software architect role along the way. Through all of it, I've never lost my love for the cello, and I've stayed active as both a teacher and a performer.

My wife is a Suzuki cello teacher, and over the years I've watched her, along with other busy teachers, struggle to keep up with lesson notes. Between students, there's rarely time to write down what was covered, what needs work, or what to tell parents to focus on at home. Notes get scribbled on scraps of paper, or skipped entirely, and details that would help a student improve get lost.

Earlier this year, I realized that recent advances in speech transcription and text summarization make it possible to lighten that burden. I set out to build Terza to do that: record a lesson, and Terza automatically turns it into a clear summary for the teacher and, optionally, creates practice notes for students and parents. My hope is that Terza doesn't just save teachers time, but also surfaces insights about a student's progress that would otherwise be impossible to see.

So that's how a software architect ended up building an app for music teachers. It's probably the clearest expression yet of how my two professional lives connect. I'm looking forward to hearing from Terza's users and sharing that journey here on the blog.