In the Music Cubes, no one can hear you scream… by Andi Q. '25

… which just goes to show what a great job the acoustics engineers did on soundproofing the building! I got to experience it first-hand last week, and it was pretty mindblowing.

That’s right – the Music Cubes ( otherwise⁠01 officially known as Building W18 or the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building) are finally open! For those of you unfamiliar with the Music Cubes, they consist of three cube-shaped buildings arranged at odd angles between Kresge Auditorium⁠02 where large ensembles typically rehearse and perform and the sports fields⁠03 where large ensembles don’t typically rehearse and perform , and form MIT’s new music hub. They’ve been under construction since I started at MIT, and I’d often wonder what secrets those mysterious 90%-windowless cubes would hold. (Perhaps a prison for music students who played one too many wrong notes during a rehearsal? Or maybe they’re giant versions of Minecraft note blocks?) Like much of MIT’s brutalist architecture, the exterior doesn’t exactly scream “art is created inside this space,” but after three long years, I can confirm that art is indeed created inside the Music Cubes.

C U B E. C U B E. C U B E.

Aerial view of the cubes before construction finished.

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The Music & Culture Space is the smallest cube and the one I know the least about. As far as I can tell, it’s just one massive room that takes up the entire building. That room currently serves as the rehearsal space for Rambax (MIT’s Senegalese drum ensemble) and Galak Tika (MIT’s Balinese gamelan ensemble); I think it’ll also become a dance studio soon.

Rambax and Galak Tika used to rehearse in Building N52 – a 10-minute walk off campus. Now they have a space right in the center of campus.

The room is apparently also a small performance space (Galak Tika already has a concert scheduled there). Though I’m not entirely sure how that would work because there are no chairs inside, and you must remove your shoes before entering.

The Music Maker Building is the tallest cube and houses rehearsal rooms, offices, recording studios, a classroom, and even a makerspace! As such, it is also the only cube with windows. (Although the placement of those windows leaves much to be desired.)

This is how my Sims 3 houses used to look when I was twelve.

However, I think there’s a practical reason why there are so few windows – they’re just much harder to soundproof than solid walls, especially when even the solid walls require more than a foot of insulating material. As a result of this design choice, the soundproofing inside the Music Maker Building’s rehearsal rooms is insanely good. You really should go inside and experience it yourself to hear just how good it is, but to give you an idea, two musicians can play in adjacent rehearsal rooms and not hear each other at all. (Even with the door open, the sound you can hear in the hallway is quite muffled.)

But that’s not all these rehearsal rooms have to offer! Each one also has an array of microphones built in, which allow us to make high-quality studio recordings at the click of a button without worrying about setting up all the equipment.

Anyway, this building’s theme is music technology (hence the high-tech rehearsal rooms). The makerspace is equipped with electronics for tinkering with digital musical instruments, and FaMLE (MIT’s laptop ensemble) sometimes rehearses here.

Finally, the Performance Lab is the crown jewel of the Music Cubes – a brand-new concert hall modeled after the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. Although it is not as big as Kresge (which seats almost twice as many people), it’s better suited for smaller ensembles, especially with its unusual layout where the audience completely surrounds the performers.

The Performance Lab is still under construction and will only open near the end of the semester, but it will be just in time for the MIT Wind Ensemble’s last rehearsal before winter break!

On a tangentially related note, the MIT Wind Ensemble is having an “open rehearsal” next Monday 9/30! If you’re an MIT student who wants to learn more about music performance at MIT ( and also preferably plays the bassoon⁠04 please please please we are so desperate for a bassoonist ), come to Kresge at 8:15-ish to sit in the audience, on stage with us, or even play along!