The Music Room

by Andrew Licini (SP Music Chair)

Tucked away between the Seminar Room and the gym, there’s an unassuming room labelled 187. However, if you check out the key at the front desk, you will find yourself in a world of unparalleled enchantment! Yes, this is the fabled S-P Music Room (not Narnia, sorry), and it’s got a lot of great resources all musicians or music enthusiasts will enjoy!

If you know anything about practice rooms, you’d probably be expecting a piano to inside. And you’d be right! However, that’s not NEARLY the most exciting or unique instrument in there! For starters, we also have a full drum set, with plenty of drumsticks and a cymbal set that can be checked out at the front desk. Drums are pretty hard to find on campus, so it’s a great resource! And that’s just scratching the surface: we also have three amps with provided jack cables, microphone and music stands, a set of traditional Indian tabla drums, and even an upright double bass!!! There’s even a set of high-quality speakers with an AUX port that fits most laptop or cell phone headphone jacks, so you can jam along to your favorite tunes!

The key can be checked out on a first-come-first-served basis at the front desk, which ensures that you have the room under your exclusive management for up to 2 hours! If you want to reserve a timeslot in advance, you can go to http://s-p.mit.edu/reserve/, which gives you the unquestionable right to the room even if it’s in use when your reservation slot starts. Invite a bunch of friends and hold a jam session! Or just practice by yourself in the luxury of complete privacy. It’s up to you!

On top of that, there are even more resources at the front desk that you can easily use in conjunction with the S-P Music Room. In addition to the aforementioned drum cymbals, we also have acoustic, electric and bass guitars, an electric keyboard, a violin, a glockenspiel (a portable metal xylophone), as well as a wide variety of sheet music and even beginner instructional books for piano and guitar. It’s a musical instrument paradise!

Finally, if all of these wonderful things aren’t enough to satisfy your musical cravings, we even have an officer at Sidney Pacific whose specific job it is to maintain and expand our musical inventory! Yes, that officer is the extremely dedicated, amazingly brilliant, gorgeously handsome and unbelievably humble Music Chair (who, just as a reminder, definitely isn’t the author of this article)! In addition to performing repairs and maintenance on the musical instruments, he also organizes jam sessions, music outings and even has a modest budget for purchasing things on resident request! If anything breaks, or if you want musical something to happen or appear in inventory, make sure you email him at alicini@mit.edu or sp-music-chair@mit.edu, and he’ll be more than happy to help!

About the author: When he’s not doing chemistry or pulling his hair out about his chemistry, Andrew is a music enthusiast who enjoys jamming with S-P residents, singing in the Tech Catholic Community choir or playing tuba in the MIT Marching Band… or playing a tuba for pretty much any other reason.