How does an ensemble play music collectively whereas aside? This was the query dealing with Frederick Ajisafe and the remainder of the MIT Wind Ensemble (MITWE) at first of the Covid-19 pandemic. One methodology was to individually report tracks that had been later blended collectively to sound like a full ensemble.
“It was a strange experience,” says Ajisafe, who performs the tuba and is pursuing a double main in aerospace engineering and music. “It wasn’t as cohesive as playing together in person, but the results are something to be proud of.”
Now that the group is ready to rehearse in particular person as soon as once more, Ajisafe has a renewed appreciation for the neighborhood he has discovered inside MITWE.
“As far as the togetherness of the ensemble, the intangible and social connections that we all have, I feel like we’re back in that sense,” he says. “The biggest difference is that I’m a senior. The last time we were together without masks, I was a freshman looking up to people, but now people are looking up to me.”
An completed musician, Ajisafe has been enjoying the tuba since center college.
“In middle school, I heard a lot of things like ‘music makes you smarter,’ so I said, ‘okay, I want to be smarter,’ so I joined the band program,” says Ajisafe. “Something about my lip shape and my lung capacity was really good for the tuba.”
It was greater than only a bodily affinity for the instrument that saved Ajisafe enjoying; he additionally beloved the social facet of enjoying in an ensemble. Last 12 months, he was accepted as an Emerson Scholar in tuba efficiency, receiving sponsored personal classes with famend skilled tuba participant Ken Amis.
Ajisafe has additionally taken quite a lot of lessons in MIT’s Music and Theater Arts part that cowl a variety of subjects, from conventional concept to composition.
One of his favourite lessons is 21M.361 (Electronic Music Composition), which teaches the best way to pattern and manipulate sounds in numerous software program. Some of the sounds Ajisafe sampled all through the course of the category embrace snapping, clapping, enjoying a scale on his tuba, and slamming an object on the bottom. Then, these sounds had been match to a rating Ajisafe created for a earlier task. He described the method as intellectually satisfying, in addition to pushing the envelope in how he understands music.
“Most people probably wouldn’t call it music, but it has musical elements,” says Ajisafe. “It gives you a new perspective on the world.”
From spelling bees to pure language processing
Ajisafe grew up in Orlando, Florida, and had a variety of pursuits rising up.
“Whatever they were teaching in school, I was excited about,” he says. “I was always interested in words and things like that, but I was also interested in science and math.”
Growing up near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, it’s simple to see how Ajisafe cultivated an curiosity in aerospace.
“Aerospace engineering is the most exciting field within engineering right now,” says Ajisafe. “And you can see it with all of the stuff going on in Florida. Seeing all the rocket launches inspired me to pick aerospace engineering and once I got into it, it confirmed that more and more.”
But there was additionally a childhood participation within the native spelling bee that tickled his curiosity in phrases. Now, he’s engaged on a undertaking, by way of MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, that mixes linguistics, pure language processing, and plane design necessities.
One of the challenges of writing design necessities for plane is ambiguity, particularly when the necessities are written in conventional, pure language type. More engineers are turning to model-based techniques engineering requirements, which is newer and extra formalized. Ajisafe is tackling the issue of translating the unique necessities into the newer type, particularly, placing collectively consultant coaching information for a machine studying algorithm.
“I’m figuring out the more granular level to label these sorts of sentences to figure out if we could use a more automatic system using parts of speech,” Ajisafe explains. “For example, maybe you can devise a pattern that labels a noun at the beginning of a sentence as the entity important to systems engineers, like ‘the parachute shall deploy at this time’ — the parachute is the entity.”
Instead of changing each element of the sentence to a system mannequin, his group has decided that it’s efficient to concentrate on labeling and extracting sure key components.
The undertaking combines many various abilities that Ajisafe has picked up all through his MIT profession, all coming collectively in concord to deal with a novel downside.
“I always want to see the next thing beyond”
Next 12 months, Ajisafe plans to pursue his grasp’s diploma by way of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
“Ultimately, I would like to be working with the technical problems related to space exploration and getting humanity to the stars,” says Ajisafe. “I don’t know exactly where I fit in that, but hopefully I can have a positive impact.”
And after all, prefer it’s been all through his life, he desires to proceed doing music, whether or not it’s enjoying tuba or attempting different retailers.
“For humanity to survive, it is good and maybe even necessary to seek out other places besides Earth,” Ajisafe says as regards to his profession aspirations. But, it connects to how he approaches his private life as properly: “I always want to walk out somewhere I’ve never been before and be in a place that I’m completely unfamiliar with. I always want to see the next thing beyond.”