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Augmented Sixth Chords, As Digested By A Jazz Musician. Tonal Harmony TutorialToday we’re going to talk about this chord:

Nowadays we see this chord as a subV/V, but in the Classical period this chord was treated using a very different perspective. Composers back then, saw this chord as an augmented sixth chord.

Watch the entire lesson here

Although these two points of view are very different, the reason for using this chord was the same back then as it is now: to tonicize the V chord — in what we call: a Half Cadence.

For those of you studying tonal harmony, I think this will clarify how, and why, this chord works, and how to solve those challenging tonal Harmony worksheets that your teacher always seems to be giving you.

For jazz musicians this is just a subV/V. When you play it on the piano, it’s clearly a dominant chord. And there’s three variations: the German augmented sixth (with all of the regular notes), the Italian augmented sixth (which has no 5th), and the crazy French augmented sixth version (with a b5).

Now, in the classical era, they didn’t see this chord as a dominant chord — made out of the 1 3 5 and b7. Here’s how this chord works for the classical mind…

This concept was developed from the perspective of being in a minor key. It works perfectly fine in a major key, but the augmented sixth chord was conceived from the perspective of being in minor.

So let’s say we’re in the key of C minor.

What’s the V of C? G! Now, what is the best trick to tonicize that G? Well, if we use the Ab (only a half step above G), and an F# (which is the leading tone to G), when we write it down, we have an augmented sixth, which resolves to that G in octaves by contrary motion.

Remember this: the augmented six chord always resolves to the V of the key in octaves (or doubled unison, if we’re using an inversion of the augmented sixth chord).

But an augmented sixth is nothing else than a b7. Ab to F# is the same as Ab to Gb. If we now add the 3rd of the chord, we get an Ab7 dominant chord without the 5th. And this C wants to go to the 3rd of the G chord like this… This is the Italian augmented sixth chord.

If we also add the 5th of the chord (Eb) we get the German augmented sixth. And of course Eb wants to go to a D (the 5th of the G chord)

So now, we have a beautiful tension-release effect. These two notes resolve in contrary motion. By the way, in the Italian sixth we can double the 3rd of the chord — since we don’t have the Eb — and then, one C moves down to the B, and the other moves up to the D.

But what if the Eb is already resolved to the D? That’s the French augmented sixth.

The D is already present in the augmented sixth chord. It doesn’t have to move at all.

So now, when you see a problem like this…

…just think like this:

The Ab wants to move down a half step. So it goes to G, which must be the 5th of the key. And the G is the V in the key of C minor. So we’re in the key of C minor. We’re going to resolve the G’s in octaves. So the top note has to be a leading tone to G (F#). And there’s your augmented sixth (Ab to F#)

And we add the 3rd of the chord (C) which by the way, is always the tonic of the key that we’re in. And to make it a French augmented sixth, we have to add a D — which is the 5th of the G chord — already resolved in the chord. This D is actually the b5 of our Ab chord.

So once you understand the purpose of this chord, and how it works, it’s very easy to solve this problem.

Let’s do another one.

This Eb will move down to D. D is the V in our key, then we’re in the key of G minor. And the other D — an octave above — should be approached by its leading tone (C#)

Then we add the 3rd of the chord, which is our tonic, and since it says that it’s an Italian augmented sixth, we just double it. I’m going to go ahead and put it an octave higher in the upper voice. Now, one G moves down to F#, and the other moves up to A. A nice D chord.

Let’s do a German augmented sixth.

So, F has to move down to E, right? Then, E is the V of our key, which means we’re in A minor. Now we have to add the leading tone to E — which is D#. Now we add the 3rd (A) and the 5th (C). So this chord is the German augmented sixth in the key of A minor, and look: it’s an F7! It just looks weird when we write it down like this, and of course, it resolves to an E chord like this…

And remember, this is just a substitute of the V/V — on the opposite side of our circle. This German augmented sixth, in the key of A minor, is just an F7 that is replacing the B7 — the five of E.

I think it’s super interesting how harmony has its roots in counterpoint. Nowadays we would never write an F7 chord like this but, should we?

If you want to get access to this (and many other) pdf worksheets with all sorts of music related topics, you can join our “Exclusive Access” membership on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBCch4Wd-JAuyURvmmA1oyQ/join

And you can check out download Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro which is the app I used to present the video.

How To Practice Jazz Improvisation in 7 StepsI want to show you one of my favorite exercise to practice improvisation. It’s a 7-step progressive exercise that you can practice every day, no matter what your level is. You can use it as a warm-up, to clean up concepts, do ear training, and memorize songs at the same time .

Watch the entire lesson on how to practice jazz improvisation in 7 steps

Although it’s a 7-step process, you don’t need to do all seven steps every single time. Depending on your level, you can do the first three steps, or just the first one; whatever you want. But I recommend that you always start from step one and progress through the rest every time you do it.

Before you begin practicing, choose a Jazz Standard. I’m going to use “My Foolish Heart“. It’s a ballad with at most two chords per measure (which makes it ideal for this exercise)

Seven steps to practice jazz improvisation

Play the seventh chords broken in eighth notes, in root position. If you’re a piano player, you can play the root on your left hand if you feel like it. Ignoring the tensions in the score. I’m just playing the seventh chords, and break the chords going up

Next, we’re going to use inversions.This time, think of the first note in every chord, as a target note, and create a line out of them. Don’t worry too much about voice leading — it doesn’t have to be perfect from chord to chord. Just see if you can hear the first note — you’ll play — in your head, before you play it.

Alternate the arpeggios up and then down

Start with the arpeggios going down. So, first down and then up

Broken 7th chords with no rules. Play angular lines.All right, this next step might be a bit easier, but it will challenge your ability to take decisions while you improvise. We’re removing the rule of playing the complete seventh chord and also, of going up or down. You can break the chord as you wish.We’re still only drawing notes from the seventh chords. Do not worry about playing all of the notes. Try hearing that first note on each chord as a target note. By the way, if you have Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro, you can use the target notes feature, as a framework, for this step.

Add a chromatic approach from below.We’re still going to be thinking about that first note as a target note, but this time, we’re going to play a chromatic approach, from below, on the downbeat of the chord. So on a Bbmaj7, I’m going to think of the D as my target note (for example). Then I’ll play a C# on the downbeat of measure one, and then play the D, like this… This is a great step to start using notes — that are very dissonant — on top of the chords, and how the tension is released when you play the next note.

Anticipate with an enclosure, diatonic from above + chromatic from belowSo, this is the last step. It’s a bit harder, but if you can get through it, it will change the way you improvise. So, what we’re going to do is: we’re going to play an enclosure — diatonic from above, and chromatic from below — to our target. This is also known as “trapping the note”, but now, we’re going to play the enclosure before the downbeat, and target the note on the downbeat. And when we say diatonic, we mean diatonic to the key that you’re in. So, on a Dm7, we’re approaching the F with a G from above — because G is diatonic to the key of Bb. The challenge here, is that we have to start thinking about — and playing — the next chord, while we’re playing the current chord. Not easy!

Free Play

All right. So, did you do all the steps? Awesome! Did you stop at step one? Well, that’s fine too!But don’t end the exercise here!No matter which step you stopped on, I want you to integrate some Free Play into your playing. Improvise over the entire song again, only this time, loosely using the concepts that you just practiced. And when I say loosely, I mean it! Let your ears guide you. Don’t consciously follow any rules. Think as little as you can. Let it go! I promise you’ll see all these things — that you just practiced — begin to emerge in your playing, without you even having to think about them.

How to spot and label Secondary Dominants. Music Theory / Tonal Harmony LessonIf you’re taking a harmony course, you’ve certainly come across the concept of secondary dominants and endless exercises, where you’re given a piece of sheet music in which you have to label all the secondary dominants.

Well, today I’m going to give you a simple trick to spot and label secondary dominants. We won’t get into secondary neapolitan 6th chords or augmented 6th chords. Just secondary V and viio chords. And also, for simplicity, we will only look at pieces in major keys.

Watch this lesson in video format

Step 1: Find the key of the piece

To do that you just need to look at the key signature. If it has no accidentals, you’re in the key of C major.

If the key signature has sharps, then the key is a note a half step above the last sharp.

So, here the last sharp is a G#, and a half step above G# is A. So this piece is in the key of A major. Basically, the last sharp is the leading tone of the key.

And the last sharp in this piece, is A#. So this is in the key of B.

If the key signature has flats then the key is the second to last flat.

So here, the second to last is an Eb, then this is in Eb major.

This one is in Ab major.

If there’s only one flat, then it’s in the key of F major.

Step 2: Draw a circle of fifths in the key of the piece.

Yes! It is essential that you know the circle of fifths. It will save you tons of time when studying any music theory related topic. And to put a circle of fifths in a key, just draw the standard circle of fifths in C, and then turn it around until the note that represents the tonic of the key is at the top.

So, that is the circle in C major. Let’s say we have a piece in G major – with one sharp in the key signature. Then, all we have to do is rotate the circle counter-clockwise once, to get the G at the top, and we have a circle of fifths in the key of G major.

Or if we’re in Bb major – with two flats  – we rotate the circle yet again until the Bb is at the top. And we have a circle of fifths in the key of Bb.

Step 3: Draw a straight line from the 11 o’clock position across the circle, to the 5 o’clock position.

All the notes to the right are the diatonic notes. These are the notes of your major scale in that key. So this circle is in the key of C, and these notes are in the C major scale.

Here’s the circle in G major. So these are the notes in the G major scale.

And here’s the circle in Bb major, and these are the notes in the key of Bb.

Just make sure to use the correct accidentals. Don’t mix flats with sharps!

Step 4: Label the notes as degrees.

So, C is the I, D is the ii, E is the iii, F is the IV, G is the five, A is the vi, and B is the vii. The cool thing is that these labels are the same for every key.

In the key of G, G is the I and, D is the V and, A is the ii, and so on…

So, once you know where these labels go, you’ll never have to change them ever again.

Step 5: Write the leading tones for each diatonic note.

The leading tone is a half step below the note. So the leading tone for C is B. The leading tone for G is F#, and the leading tone for D is C#. You get the idea… And for the IV chord — the one at 11 o’clock — we’re gonna write the leading tone of the I, lowered by a half step. So, we turn the B under the C, into a Bb that goes under the F.

If the circle was in the key of G we would do the exact same thing. The leading tone for G is F#, for D is C#, and so on… And the only exception is for the IV chord. For this chord, you are always going to pair the root of this chord with the b7 of the key that you’re in. Not the leading tone! The leading tone of the IV chord is already in the key. So, it won’t show as an accidental in the score. But the b7 of the key will appear as an accidental.

So for C – the IV, at 11 o’clock – we change this F# to an F natural, lowering it by a half step. Now we have an accidental to look for, that will help us identify something that is targeting the IV.

In the key of Bb, we have an A as the leading tone for Bb then, E is the leading tone for F. Then, a B natural for C, and so on… Remember, the leading tone is always a half step below the target. And for the IV chord (Eb), we take this A, and lower it a half step to Ab.

That’s it!With this information you are ready to spot and label any secondary dominant in a piece of music.

If you come across an accidental that isn’t paired with one of your diatonic notes,you’re probably dealing with a more advanced secondary function.

So let me show you how easy it is to use this new enhanced circle of fifths.

Here I have a measure from Beethoven’s Sonata Opus 14 No.2, and the one sharp in the key signature tells me that we’re in the key of G major.

We have a couple of accidentals, and they are sharps. These are great candidates to potentially be secondary dominants. The first one is a G#. So, we look at our new and improved circle of fifths, and we look for a leading tone that’s a G#.

And of course, we find it there! G# is the leading tone to A. So this is almost certainly a secondary dominant that targets an A chord in the key of G. A is the ii in G major, so you can assume with confidence that this is going to be a secondary of ii.

Now, it could be the V/ii, or the V7/ii, or the viio/ii, or the viio7/ii. The only thing you have to do, to figure this out, is to see if the next note in the circle – moving clockwise – appears in the chord. That would be an E, in our case.

That’s because the next note in the circle is always the V of the previous note. Remember, this is the circle of fifths. So, is there an E in this chord? Yes!

So it’s either a V/ii or a V7/ii. And there’s a D. So, that means this is an E7. So this is a V7/ii. Of course, it’s an inversion, because the lowest note is not an E. It’s a G#. So we write V65/ii. 65 because G# to E is a 6th, and G# to D is a 5th.

Then we see a C#.

Probably another leading tone: C#, the leading tone to D. And D is the V. So we already know this is a secondary of V. Now, is it a viio, or is it a V? To figure it out, we look for an a the next note in the circle after D.

In other words, the V of D. If the A is there, then it’s a V of D. If it’s not, it’s a viio of D. And there it is!

An A in the bass. So this is a V of D. If there’s a G then it’s an A7 the V7. If not, then it’s a simple a triad – the V. And the G is there.

So this is an A7, which we can label with confidence as a V7/V.

In the video we show two more examples from Beethoven’s Pathetic Sonata and Chopin’s Valse Brillante.

We’ve prepared a PDF with the enhanced circle of fifths in all keys, which you can download right now if you’re an exclusive access member.

And if you’re not a member, you can become one by clicking on this link: Join Exclusive Access to download this pdf, along with all the other exclusive content that we publish on a regular basis.

Harmonix keeps innovating, with lasting impactEvery holiday season, a popular new video game causes a disproportionate amount of hype, anticipation, and last-minute shopping. But few of those games offer an entirely new way to play. Even fewer have ripple effects that reach far beyond the gaming universe.

When Guitar Hero was released in 2005, challenging players to hit notes to classic rock songs on guitar-like controllers, it grew from a holiday hit to a cultural phenomenon that taught a new generation to love rock ‘n’ roll music. Along the way, it showed the video game industry the power of innovative, music-based games.

Guitar Hero and the related Rock Band franchise were developed by Harmonix Music Systems, which formed more than 25 years ago in MIT’s Media Lab when a pair of friends began using technology to help people interact with music. Since then, it has released more than a dozen games that have helped millions of people experience the thrill of making music.

“The thing that we’ve always tried to accomplish is to innovate in music gameplay,” says Eran Egozy ’93, SM ’95, a professor of the practice in music and theater arts at MIT who co-founded the company with Alex Rigopulos ’92, SM ’94. “That’s what the company is constantly trying to do — creating new kinds of compelling music experiences.”

To further that mission, Harmonix became a part of industry giant Epic Games last month. It’s a major milestone for a company that has watched its games go from small passion projects to ubiquitous sources of expression and fun.

Egozy has seen Harmonix games on famous bands’ tour buses, in the offices of tech giants like Google, at bars hosting “Rock Band nights,” and being portrayed in popular TV shows. Most importantly, he’s heard from music teachers who say the games inspired kids to play real instruments.

In fact, Egozy just heard from his son’s school principal that the reason he plays the drums is because of Rock Band.

“That’s probably the most gratifying part,” says Egozy, who plays the clarinet professionally. “Of course, we had great hopes and aspirations when we started the company, but we didn’t think we would actually make such a big impact. We’ve been totally surprised.”

Mission-driven beginnings

As an undergraduate at MIT, Egozy majored in electrical engineering and computer science and minored in music. But he never thought about combining computers and music until he participated in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program under then-graduate student Michael Hawley in the Media Lab.

The experience inspired Egozy to pursue his master’s degree at the Media Lab’s Opera of the Future group, led by Tod Machover, where he began building software that generated music based on intuitive controls. He also met Rigopulos at the Media Lab, who quickly became a friend and collaborator.

“Alex had this idea: Wouldn’t it be cool if we took a joystick that’s a more friendly interface and used it to drive the parameters of our generative music system?” Egozy recalls.

The joystick-based system immediately became one of the most popular demos at the Media Lab, leading the pair to participate in the MIT $10K Entrepreneurship Competition (the MIT $100K today).

“I think MIT imbued me with a sense that there’s no point in trying to do something that someone’s already done,” Egozy says. “If you’re going to work on something, try to do something inventive. That’s a pervasive attitude all around MIT, not just at the Media Lab.”

As graduation arrived, Egozy and Rigopulos knew they wanted to continue working on the system, but they doubted they could find a company that would pay them to do it. Out of that simple logic, Harmonix was born.

The founders spent the next four years working on the technology, which led to a product called Axe that Egozy describes as a “total flop.” They also built a system for Disney at the Epcot amusement park and tried to integrate their software with karaoke machines in Japan.

“We sustained multiple failures trying to figure out what our business was, and it took us quite a while to discover the way to satisfy our mission, which is to let everyone in the world experience the joy of making music. As it turns out, that was through video games,” Egozy says.

The company’s first several video games were not huge hits, but by iterating on the core platform, Harmonix was able to steadily improve on the design and gameplay.

As a result, when it came time to make Guitar Hero around 2005, the founders had music, graphics, and design systems they knew could work with unique controllers.

Egozy describes Guitar Hero as a relatively low-budget project within Harmonix. The company had two games in development at the time, and the Guitar Hero team was the smaller one. It was also a quick turnaround: They finished Guitar Hero in about nine months.

Through its other releases, the Harmonix team had been trained to expect most of its sales to come in the weeks leading up to the Christmas holiday and then for sales to essentially stop. With Guitar Hero, the game sold incredibly quickly — so quickly that retailers immediately wanted more, and the company making the guitar controllers had to multiply their orders with manufacturers.

But what really surprised the founders was that January’s sales surpassed December’s. … Then February’s surpassed January’s. In fact, month after month, the sales graph looked like nothing Harmonix’s team of 45 people had ever seen before.

“It was mostly shock and disbelief within Harmonix,” Egozy says. “We just adored making Guitar Hero. It was the game we always wanted to make. Everyone at Harmonix was somehow involved in music. The company had a band room just so people could go and jam. And so the fact that it also sold really well was extremely gratifying — and very unexpected.”

Things moved quickly for Harmonix after that. Work on Guitar Hero 2 began immediately. Guitar Hero got taken over by Activision, and Harmonix was acquired by MTV Networks for a number of years. Harmonix went on to develop the Rock Band franchise, which brought players together to perform the lead guitar, bass, keyboard, drums, and vocals of popular songs.

“That was really wonderful because it was about a group effort,” Egozy says. “Rock Band was social in the sense that everyone’s together in the same room playing music together, not competitively, but working toward a common goal.”

An ongoing legacy

Over the last decade, Harmonix has continued to explore new modes of music gameplay with releases such as SingSpace, which offers a social karaoke experience, and Fuser, a DJ-inspired game that lets users mix and match different tracks. The company also released Rock Band VR, which makes players feel like they’re on stage in front of a live audience.

These days Egozy, who’s been on the board since he became a full-time professor at MIT in 2014, teaches 21M.385/6.185 (Interactive Music Systems), a class that combines computer science, interaction design, and music. “It’s the class I wish I had as an undergrad here at MIT,” Egozy says.

And every semester, the class takes a tour of the Harmonix office. He’s often told it’s students’ favorite part of class.

“I'm really proud of what we were able to do, and I’m still surprised and humbled by the cultural impact we had,” Egozy says. “There is a generation of kids that grew up playing these games that learned about all this music from the ’70s and ’80s. I’m really happy we were able to expose kids to all that great music.”

Life in space: Preparing for an increasingly tangible realityAs a not-so-distant future that includes space tourism and people living off-planet approaches, the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative is designing and researching the activities humans will pursue in new, weightless environments. 

Since 2017, the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) has orchestrated regular parabolic flights through the ZERO-G Research Program to test experiments that rely on microgravity. This May, the SEI supported researchers from the Media Lab; MIT's departments of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), and Mechanical Engineering; MIT Kavli Institute; the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology; the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) at Harvard University; the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media at Yale University; the multi-affiliated Szostak Laboratory, and the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology to fly 22 different projects exploring research as diverse as fermentation, reconfigurable space structures, and the search for life in space. 

Most of these projects resulted from the 2019 or 2020 iterations of MAS.838 / 16.88 (Prototyping Our Space Future) taught by Ariel Ekblaw, SEI founder and director, who began teaching the class in 2018. (Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 flight was postponed, leading to two cohorts being flown this year.)

“The course is intentionally titled ‘Prototyping our Sci-Fi Space Future,’” she says, “because this flight opportunity that SEI wrangles, for labs across MIT, is meant to incubate and curate the future artifacts for life in space and robotic exploration — bringing the Media Lab's uniqueness, magic, and creativity into the process.” 

The class prepares researchers for the realities of parabolic flights, which involves conducting experiments in short, 20-second bursts of zero gravity. As the course continues to offer hands-on research and logistical preparation, and as more of these flights are executed, the projects themselves are demonstrating increasing ambition and maturity. 

“Some students are repeat flyers who have matured their experiments, and [other experiments] come from researchers across the MIT campus from a record number of MIT departments, labs, and centers, and some included alumni and other external collaborators,” says Maria T. Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research and SEI faculty advisor. “In short, there was stiff competition to be selected, and some of the experiments are sufficiently far along that they’ll soon be suitable for spaceflight.” 

Dream big, design bold 

Both the 2020 and 2021 flight cohorts included daring new experiments that speak to SEI’s unique focus on research across disciplines. Some look to capitalize on the advantages of microgravity, while others seek to help find ways of living and working without the force that governs every moment of life on Earth. 

Che-Wei Wang, Sands Fish, and Mehak Sarang from SEI collaborated on Zenolith, a free-flying pointing device to orient space travelers in the universe — or, as the research team puts it, a 3D space compass. “We were able to perform some maneuvers in zero gravity and confirm that our control system was functioning quite well, the first step towards having the device point to any spot in the solar system,” says Sarang. “We'll still have to tweak the design as we work towards our ultimate goal of sending the device to the International Space Station!” 

Then there’s the Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit project by Rachel Bellisle, a doctoral student in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology and a Draper Fellow. The Skinsuit is designed to replicate the effects of Earth gravity for use in exercise on future missions to the moon or to Mars, and to further attenuate microgravity-induced physiological effects in current ISS mission scenarios. The suit has a 10-plus-year history of development at MIT and internationally, with prior parabolic flight experiments. Skinsuit originated in the lab of Dava Newman, who now serves as Media Lab director.

“Designing, flying, and testing an actual prototype is the best way that I know of to prepare our suit designs for actual long-term spaceflight missions,” says Newman. “And flying in microgravity and partial gravity on the ZERO-G plane is a blast!” 

Alongside the Skinsuit are two more projects flown this spring that involve wearables and suit prototypes: the Peristaltic Suit developed by Media Lab researcher Irmandy Wicaksono and the Bio-Digital Wearables or Space Health Enhancement project by Media Lab researcher Pat Pataranutaporn. 

“Wearables have the potential to play a critical role in monitoring, supporting, and sustaining human life in space, lessening the need for human medical expert intervention,” Pataranutaporn says. “Also, having this microgravity experience after our SpaceCHI workshop ... gave me so many ideas for thinking about other on-body systems that can augment humans in space — that I don’t think I would get from just reading a research paper.” 

AgriFuge, from Somayajulu Dhulipala and Manwei Chan (graduate students in MIT's departments of Mechanical Engineering and AeroAstro, respectively), offers future astronauts a rotating plant habitat that provides simulated gravity as well as a controllable irrigation system. AgriFuge anticipates a future of long-duration missions where the crew will grow their own plants — to replenish oxygen and food, as well as for the psychological benefits of caring for plants. Two more cooking-related projects that flew this spring include H0TP0T, by Larissa Zhou from Harvard SEAS, and Gravity Proof, by Maggie Coblentz of the SEI — each of which help demonstrate a growing portfolio of practical “life in space” research being tested on these flights. 

The human touch 

In addition to the increasingly ambitious and sophisticated individual projects, an emerging theme in SEI’s microgravity endeavor is a focus on approaches to different aspects of life and culture in space — not only in relation to cooking, but also architecture, music, and art. 

Sanjana Sharma of the SEI flew her Fluid Expressions project this spring, which centers around the design of a memory capsule that functions as both a traveler’s painting kit for space and an embodied, material reminder of home. During the flight, she was able to produce three abstract watercolor paintings. “The most important part of this experience for me,” she says, “was the ability to develop a sense of what zero gravity actually feels like, as well as how the motions associated with painting differ during weightlessness.” 

Ekblaw has been mentoring two new architectural projects as part of the SEI’s portfolio, building on her own TESSERAE work for in-space self-assembly: Self Assembling Space Frames by SEI’s Che-Wei Wang and Reconfigurable space structures by Martin Nisser of MIT CSAIL. Wang envisions his project as a way to build private spaces in zero-gravity environments. “You could think of it like a pop-up tent for space,” he says. “The concept can potentially scale to much larger structures that self-assemble in space, outside space stations.” 

Onward and upward

Two projects that explore different notions of the search for life in space include Ø-scillation, a collaboration between several scientists at the MIT Kavli Institute, Media Lab, EAPS, and Harvard; and the Electronic Life-detection Instrument (ELI) by Chris Carr, former MIT EAPS researcher and current Georgia Tech faculty member, and Daniel Duzdevich, a postdoc at the Szostak Laboratory. 

The ELI project is a continuation of work within Zuber’s lab, and has been flown on previous flights. “Broadly, our goals are to build a low-mass life-detection instrument capable of detecting life as we know it — or as we don't know it,” says Carr. During the 2021 flight, the researchers tested upgraded hardware that permits automatic real-time sub-nanometer gap control to improve the measurement fidelity of the system — with generally successful results. 

Microgravity Hybrid Extrusion, led by SEI’s mission integrator, Sean Auffinger, alongside Ekblaw, Nisser, Wang, and MIT Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program student Aiden Padilla, was tested on both flights this spring and works toward building in situ, large-scale space structures — it’s also one of the selected projects being flown on an ISS mission in December 2021. The SEI is also planning a prospective "Astronaut Interaction" mission on the ISS in 2022, where artifacts like Zenolith will have the chance to be manipulated by astronauts directly. 

This is a momentous fifth anniversary year for SEI. As these annual flights continue, and the experiments aboard them keep growing more advanced, researchers are setting their sights higher — toward designing and preparing for the future of interplanetary civilization. 

There’s a symphony in the antibody protein the body makes to neutralize the coronavirusThe pandemic reached a new milestone this spring with the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines. MIT Professor Markus Buehler marked the occasion by writing “Protein Antibody in E Minor,” an orchestral piece performed last month by South Korea’s Lindenbaum Festival Orchestra. The room was empty, but the message was clear.

“It’s a hopeful piece as we enter this new phase in the pandemic,” says Buehler, the McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT, and also a composer of experimental music.

“This is the beginning of a musical healing project,” adds Hyung Joon Won, a Seoul-based violinist who initiated the collaboration.

“Protein Antibody in E Minor” is the sequel to “Viral Counterpoint of the Spike Protein,” a piece Buehler wrote last spring during the first wave of coronavirus infections. Picked up by the media, “Viral Counterpoint” went global, like the virus itself, reaching Won, who at the time was performing for patients hospitalized with Covid-19. Won became the first in a series of artists to approach Buehler about collaborating.

At Won’s request, Buehler adapted “Viral Counterpoint” for the violin. This spring, the two musicians teamed up again, with Buehler translating the coronavirus-attacking antibody protein into a score for a 10-piece orchestra.

The two pieces are as different as the proteins they are based on. “Protein Antibody” is harmonious and playful; “Viral Counterpoint” is foreboding, even sinister. “Protein Antibody,” which is based on the part of the protein that attaches to SARS-CoV-2, runs for five minutes; “Viral Counterpoint,” which represents the virus’s entire spike protein, meanders for 50.

Markus J. Buehler · Protein Antibody in E minor

The antibody protein’s straightforward shape lent itself to a classical composition, says Buehler. The intricate folds of the spike protein, by contrast, required a more complex representation.

Both pieces use a theory that Buehler devised for translating protein structures into musical scores. Both proteins — antigen and pathogen — have 20 amino acids, which can be expressed as 20 unique vibrational tones. Proteins, like other molecules, vibrate at different frequencies, a phenomenon Buehler has used to “see” the virus and its variants, capturing their complex entanglements in a musical score.

In work with the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and PhD student Yiwen Hu, Buehler discovered that the proteins that stud SARS-Cov-2 vibrate less frequently and intensely than its more lethal cousins, SARS and MERS. He hypothesizes that the viruses use vibrations to jimmy their way into cells; the more energetic the protein, the deadlier the virus or mutation.
“As the coronavirus continues to mutate, this method gives us another way of studying the variants and the threat they pose,” says Buehler. “It also shows the importance of considering proteins as vibrating objects in their biological context.”

Translating proteins into music is part of Buehler’s larger work designing new proteins by borrowing ideas from nature and harnessing the power of AI. He has trained deep-learning algorithms to both translate the structure of existing proteins into their vibrational patterns and run the operation in reverse to infer structure from vibrational patterns. With these tools, he hopes to take existing proteins and create entirely new ones targeted for specific technological or medical needs.

The process of turning science into art is like finding another “microscope” to observe nature, says Buehler. It has also opened his work to a broader audience. More than a year after “Viral Counterpoint’s” debut, the piece has racked up more than a million downloads on SoundCloud. Some listeners were so moved they asked Buehler for permission to create their own interpretation of his work. In addition to Won, the violinist in South Korea, the piece was picked up by a ballet company in South Africa, a glass artist in Oregon, and a dance professor in Michigan, among others.

A “suite” of homespun ballets

The Joburg Ballet shut down last spring with the rest of South Africa. But amid the lockdown, “Viral Counterpoint” reached Iain MacDonald, artistic director of Joburg Ballet. Then, as now, the company’s dancers were quarantined at home. Putting on a traditional ballet was impossible, so MacDonald improvised; he assigned each dancer a fragment of Buehler’s music and asked them to choreograph a response. They performed from home as friends and family filmed from their cellphones. Stitched together, the segments became “The Corona Suite,” a six-minute piece that aired on YouTube last July.

In it, the dancers twirl and pirouette on a set of unlikely stages: in the stairwell of an apartment building, on a ladder in a garden, and beside a glimmering swimming pool. With no access to costumes, the dancers made do with their own leotards, tights, and even boxer briefs, in whatever shade of red they could find. “Red became the socially-distant cohesive thread that tied the company together,” says MacDonald.

MacDonald says the piece was intended as a public service announcement, to encourage people to stay home. It was also meant to inspire hope: that the company’s dancers would return to the stage, stay mentally and physically fit, and that everyone would pull through. “We all hoped that the virus would not cause harm to our loved ones,” he says. “And that we, as a people, could come out of this stronger and united than ever before.” 

A Covid “sonnet” cast in glass

Jerri Bartholomew, a microbiologist at Oregon State University, was supposed to spend her sabbatical last year at a lab in Spain. When Covid intervened, she retreated to the glass studio in her backyard. There, she focused on her other passion: making art from her research on fish parasites. She had previously worked with musicians to translate her own data into music; when she heard “Viral Counterpoint” she was moved to reinterpret Buehler’s music as glass art. 

She found his pre-print paper describing the sonification process, digitized the figures, and transferred them to silkscreen. She then printed them on a sheet of glass, fusing and casting the images to create a series of increasingly abstract representations. After, she spent hours polishing each glass work. “It’s a lot of grinding,” she says. Her favorite piece, Covid Sonnet, shows the spike protein flowing into Buehler’s musical score. “His musical composition is an abstraction,” she says. “I hope people will be curious about why it looks and sounds the way it does. It makes the science more interesting.”

Translating a lethal virus into movement

Months into the pandemic, Covid’s impact on immigrants in the United States was becoming clear; Rosely Conz, a choreographer and native of Brazil, wanted to channel her anxiety into art. When she heard “Viral Counterpoint,” she knew she had a score for her ballet. She would make the virus visible, she decided, in the same way Buehler had made it audible. “I looked for aspects of the virus that could be applied to movement — its machine-like characteristics, its transfer from one performer to another, its protein spike that makes it so infectious,” she says.

“Virus” debuted this spring at Alma College, a liberal arts school in rural Michigan where Conz teaches. On a dark stage shimmering with red light, her students leaped and glided in black pointe shoes and face masks. Their elbows and legs jabbed at the air, almost robotically, as if to channel the ugliness of the virus. Those gestures were juxtaposed by “melting movements” that Rosely says embody the humanity of the dancer. The piece is literally about the virus, but also the constraints of making art in a crisis; the dancers maintained six feet of distance throughout. “I always tell my students that in choreography we should use limitation as possibility, and that is what I tried to do,” she says. 

Back at MIT, Buehler is planning several more “Protein Antibody” performances with Won this year. In the lab, he and Hu, his PhD student, are expanding their study of the molecular vibrations of proteins to see if they might have therapeutic value. “It’s the next step in our quest to better understand the molecular mechanics of the life,” he says.