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.

Navigating uncertainty through songIt was his first week on campus, and like most first-year students, Alberto Naveira felt overwhelmed. On top of the usual college fears, he felt trapped between two worlds — his familiar, small, Catholic high school in Puerto Rico versus his new life as an MIT student in Cambridge.

To regain a sense of comfort, Naveira chose to stick with the things he knew well. He spent his time with other Puerto Rican students. He declared a major in biological engineering to continue pursuing his lifelong goal of being a physician. Throughout the transition, Naveira held on to his past to stay grounded. “I was never the type of person to try new things. Suddenly, here I was in a completely different environment, language, and culture. I didn’t know what to do,” he recalls.

As the year went on, Naveira watched as his Puerto Rican classmates grew apart to find new groups of their own. Yet, he struggled to decide where he belonged. By the time he was a sophomore, Naveira knew he was lonely and needed a change. He thought back to high school, during moments when he felt most connected to a community. Most of these memories revolved around singing in his school’s choir. He realized he could revisit his passion by devoting himself to the Chorallaries of MIT, the Institute’s oldest co-ed student a capella group.

After joining, Naveira realized that getting to know members would require him to become more than just a performer. When the president position became available, Naveira realized this was his chance to step up. The demanding role immediately required him to spend countless hours with the group. “I started to feel closer to the others after we spent a good deal of time together coordinating performances. It was through these troubleshooting challenges that we began to actually bond,” he says.

As president, Naveira sought to make important changes to help newcomers like himself feel more welcomed. Along with planned social events, he focused on encouraging more casual get-togethers. “We would often go to the dining halls to catch dinner or brunch together. After performances, I always made sure that we’d acknowledge our accomplishments by having a celebration together,” he says. “They were little things, but I think they allowed us to become closer.”

Naveira also united members by facilitating conversations about the group’s shared traditions and values. When members advocated for new ideas, Naveira found himself championing their causes. “It was brought to my attention that our traditional song had lyrics that were heteronormative and lacked consent. There were also unnecessarily strict rules for the male performance dress code. By talking it through, we were able to make changes that were both fair and true to our customs.”

Throughout the year, Naveira began to see changes in himself as he developed into the role. He found himself speak up without fear, eager to listen and share his ideas. He was finally breaking out of his shell. “It took a while before I was able to confidently go in front of older members and make decisions. But the more time I spent on it, the better I got at projecting myself,” he says.  

While coordinating the group came with challenging moments, Naveira grew to truly appreciate teamwork over singing solo. “There’s something to be said about living music as a social experience,” he says. “Like when you make eye contact with someone during a performance and there’s this shared intense emotion. It’s unlike anything else. You can’t have that on your own.”

Today, Naveira continues to be part of the Chorallaries as a performer, arranger, and audio mixer. Although he now feels at home at MIT, Naveira acknowledges that the process took dedication and self-discovery. He tries to spread this message to other struggling students he tutors through the Talented Scholars Resource Room (TSR^2) in the Office of Minority Education. “As I dug deeper into the communities that shared my interests, I started to feel more at home here,” he shares. “I try to emphasize this to my students whenever I can. If you feel like you haven’t found your place yet, it just takes some time.”

Naveira has also used his time in college to expand his original academic interest in medicine. He says the variety in his courses has shown him new ways of thinking, as well as career alternatives to becoming a physician. His favorite course, 20.309 (Instrumentation and Measurement for Biological Systems), encouraged him to investigate biology by applying principles from other engineering disciplines. “The interdisciplinary nature of the class showed me how medicine expands into other fields. We learned how something like signal processing can be applied to everything from medicine to music,” says Naveiro. “It blew my mind and made me rethink what I know.”

Over the past few months, Naveira has focused less on sticking to a defined path and more on pursuing what he loves. Stepping beyond music performance, he is currently pursuing a second bachelor’s degree in music production at Berklee College of Music. His new skills were used to arrange the Chorallaries’ most recent virtual performance, which won first place in the 2021 ICAA Northeastern Quarterfinal. Naveira plans on continuing to pursue music even after graduation. “Regardless of where I end up, I’m certain that I’ll never be happy unless music is part of my life. It’s something I truly value,” he says.

He also remains open to all types of career paths in medicine. Naveira loves the idea of continuing to apply knowledge from different disciplines to rethink medical problems. “The more I learn, the harder it is to choose a career in a specific field,” Naveira explains. “That’s something I never expected. I always knew that MIT would be a great place for me to grow as a researcher. But I never expected to grow as a musician, a tutor, a friend, and a person in general.”

“This past year has shown me that nothing is guaranteed. Life will always be full of uncertainty and I’ll be forced to try new things. But I feel that, with the right people by my side, I can handle anything.”

Hacking CommencementIn the finest MIT tradition of community-driven innovation, the Commencement Committee and a core group of engineers, technologists, and artists across campus are putting minds and hands to work to create a meaningful, engaging online Commencement experience for the Class of 2020. 

Moving the tradition-rich celebration online without diminishing its significance, and with less than two months to plan, is a complex problem. The organizing team knew from the outset that the challenge would be to achieve the key moments of the Commencement ceremony in an online environment, without trying to recreate the in-person experience. Professor Eric Grimson, chancellor for academic advancement and chair of the Commencement Committee, says, "We are in a fortunate position to adapt to this year’s circumstances. Running Commencement the normal way is a logistical tour de force, involving hundreds of people, many of whom who work all year to make it happen. Moving it online was a different kind of coordination, but thanks to the knowledge embedded in the team, it didn't feel like starting from scratch."

It helps that the Institute is equipped with an extensive toolkit for building online experiences. “We’ve spent the last two decades opening up MIT to the world virtually through online teaching and learning,” says Professor Sanjay Sarma, vice president for open learning. “By combining MIT’s experience in digital technologies with the passion and ingenuity of the MIT community, I knew something amazing would emerge.”
Honoring tradition

The Commencement Committee recognized the challenge in creating a sense of occasion in an all-remote event. In addition to ensuring that the technical elements function effectively, the planning team worked to develop a meaningful experience through which degree candidates become MIT alumni. Student government representatives recommended that the program not exceed one hour, although it will be preceded by an introductory pre-program show co-hosted by graduating seniors Talia Khan and Yaateh Richardson. The pre-program will include greetings to family and friends submitted by students as part of a project organized by MIT Video Productions (MVP).

In addition to the student greetings, MVP has developed a celebratory retrospective that will be part of the pre-program show. “One of the things the planning team has had in mind is balancing a natural feeling of loss and disappointment with the fact that graduating from MIT is a tremendous accomplishment,” says Larry Gallagher, senior producer and advisor to the vice president for open learning. “We don’t want to let the last three months overshadow students’ four to six years at MIT.” 

The Institute has always cherished its traditions, and the online program will incorporate as many as possible, including a digital version of the iconic turning of the Brass Rat class ring as students become alumni. In reimagining the look and feel of Commencement, Institute Events invited Peter Agoos and Andrew Zamore of Agoos D*zines, with whom they had collaborated on the MIT150 and MIT2016 celebrations, to join the planning team. Frederick Harris, lecturer in music and director of wind ensembles, provided artistic guidance.

The speaking portion of the online Commencement program and degree conferral will open with remarks by Robert Millard ’73, chair of the MIT Corporation, who will introduce guest speaker William H. McRaven, retired U.S. Navy admiral and former chancellor of the University of Texas system. Following salutes from Graduate Student Council President Peter Su and Senior Class President Nwanacho Nwana, President L. Rafael Reif will give his charge to the graduates and confer degrees. Esther Duflo PhD ’99, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics this past autumn, will offer a salute to the advanced degree candidates. The program concludes with the school song, led, as always, by the Chorallaries of MIT — with the finale of “Take Me Back to Tech” as a community-sourced sing-along, incorporating MIT voices submitted via video wherever they are in the world. R. Erich Caulfield SM ’01 PhD ’06, president of the MIT Alumni Association, will offer a welcome to the association and introduce the scroll of graduates’ names. 

Thanks to the pioneering work of Senior Associate Dean Mary Callahan and her team at the Registrar’s Office, MIT’s online Commencement celebration on May 29 will include the delivery of digital diplomas to students who opt in. Although graduates will receive their physical diplomas at a later date, the establishment of the digital program in June 2017 meant that MIT was well prepared to issue diplomas remotely this year. MIT Open Learning is currently expanding the development of the digital diploma technology — built on research that originated in the Media Lab — with the Digital Credentials Consortium, an international network of leading universities.

Following the main Commencement program is a post-program comprising video and other content, developed by the MIT Alumni Association to honor its 3,500 new members. Victoria Gonin, executive director for alumni relations, participated with association colleagues in the planning. “This season is a defining experience for the graduates of 2020, and we know that will stay with them,” she says. “We want them to feel immediately welcomed by an alumni community who will benefit from their talents, perspectives, and experiences.”

Comusica: many voices, one MIT

This year’s Commencement music will feature a new element that requires a combination of tech savvy and artistic talent only MIT can offer: a composition made up of individual notes sung by members of the graduating class.

The Comusica project was born of conversations between Sarma; Gayle Gallagher, executive officer for Commencement; Leila Kinney, executive director of Arts Initiatives; and composer Evan Ziporyn, Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music, who had contacted Gallagher right away to ask how he and his colleagues in the Music and Theater Arts Section could help. Sarma wondered whether MIT’s musical forces might come together in a virtual concert, similar to online performances by orchestras worldwide in past months. Ziporyn was initially skeptical, given the technical challenges, but the more the group talked about creating a musical moment that could bring the community together, the more he committed to making the idea work.

Ziporyn turned to Eran Egozy '95, professor of the practice of music technology, who came up with the idea for Comusica: allowing students at all levels of musical ability to “perform” at Commencement by recording themselves singing individual notes, which would then be arranged like a mosaic into a larger piece.

Though it requires “7 million steps along the way, incorporating a lot of coding and editing on every level,” Ziporyn says, “the basic idea seemed really beautiful to me.” He composed a chorale which provides the structure of the piece, then Egozy charted out how many notes of each type and duration were needed. With help from Arts at MIT, the team started to solicit student participation. 

Professor Isaac “Ike” Chuang, senior associate dean of digital learning, joined the project early on, providing the extensive server infrastructure and coding behind Comusica’s submission website. “Sanjay [Sarma] brought me into the conversation about Commencement when they decided to do some of these interactive, engaging elements,” says Chuang, who brings deep expertise in building platforms for online communities. 

Egozy, whom Ziporyn describes as “an incredible field marshal,” took on the task of directing the project. Working with Media Lab graduate student Nikhil Singh, Egozy has spent the past six weeks tirelessly coordinating the many producers, audiovisual technicians, and web developers from organizations across campus involved in gathering, tuning, normalizing, and assembling the voices that make up the finished piece. On top of the extensive production expertise and support they are lending to the main Commencement program, MIT Video Productions Director Clayton Hainsworth and his team also contributed animations to Comusica.

For Egozy, the collaborative nature of the work is what makes it so compelling. “It just feels like one of these awesome MIT projects,” he remarks. “At first, you don’t know how you’re going to pull it off. But then you join forces with other colleagues who come together to help drive the project forward. I love the energy. I’m both a little nervous and really excited to show off Comusica at Commencement.”

Embracing the moment and looking forward

As engaging a program as this promises to be, the organizers know that nothing compares to being together on campus to celebrate the milestones Commencement represents. MIT has therefore committed to providing the Class of 2020 with an opportunity to celebrate in-person when it is safe to do so.

But for now, there is much to celebrate and much to look forward to in this new online experience — including a few new elements and surprises. Says Grimson, who has chaired the Commencement Committee for more than 20 years, “We’re so grateful for the collaboration of our scattered community: our speakers, the planning and production teams, the student musicians, and the creative faculty. Infinite thanks to everyone who persevered this season to make Commencement a joyful day that will honor our graduates.”

Perhaps the most enduring campus custom represented in this new event is MIT’s commitment to innovation. As Chuang says, “The ideas are based in the long traditions that MIT has for Commencement; we’re just doing them a different way.”