It wasn’t easy. But it was so worth it.
Hi, it’s your faithful webmaster Apurva here, who also happens to be the president of the MIT Ohms. Here’s a breakdown of my reflections on the fall 2025 semester of the Ohms.
Running the MIT Ohms
There’s a lot more than meets the eye to running an a cappella group. There’s the planning– writing the arrangements, scheduling rehearsals, financials, publicity, auditions, and more. There are gigs, socials, events, and an entire semester concert to put on. And this semester, with it being the 15th anniversary, was probably the most ambitious semester in the Ohms for a while. Keeping the entire group running was not a walk in the park. But it also taught me so much about myself as a leader and organizer. And when else in life do I get to lead an entire performance group, if not during my time at MIT?
As president, I generally make sure everyone on exec {music directors, assistant music director, treasurer} and board are able to complete their roles in a timely and efficient manner, handle performance requests and outside collaborations, and generally act as the public face to the Ohms. Going into it, I was most nervous about the third responsibility as I’m not an extroverted person. But as the semester went on, I found myself feeling more confident about speaking at performances on behalf of the group.
Every week, I had the schedule of running exec meeting at McCormick dining on Tuesdays and sending out a weekly update email to the entire group, and throughout the week assisting with board tasks, answering emails, and other miscellaneous tasks that came up. I would always have an order of prioritization in my head of what needed to be discussed at exec meeting and what information needed to be disseminated to the group as a whole to avoid any last-minute issues. Critically, in the summer, the five of us on exec met and outlined solutions to any difficulties we’ve had in the past, and as a result, after executing these, the group ran much more smoothly.
Arranging^4
I arranged my first (3) whole-group arrangements this semester (Madhuramu, Finding Her, and The Encore) and the theme subset. Madhuramu Kadha is a Telugu love song with a substantial instrumental portion, so it was a challenge to syllabize. It also features a fast harmonized chorus. Based on a later comment that Tapas made about the VP audition section being “lowk a perc solo”, I decided to formalize it as one. Finding Her was a mashup of three songs with similar lyrics and meter and turned out to be a very convenient first mashup for me to arrange. I found The Encore to be the most challenging to arrange as it was a mashup of many past Ohms arrangements, but with Shruti and Om’s help and feedback from alOhms, it came together.
There is nothing more exciting than having your arrangement performed by the group for the first time, and seeing it come together as voices rather than electronic instruments on Musescore. I also learned so much about how much thought and stylistic choice needs to go into an arrangement for it to be fully performed by the group. Even Spider-Man theme, which was a one-day project for me, still took a lot of thought. I may post another blogpost about arranging for a cappella.
Publicity
Since we did not have as many publicity chairs as we needed, I decided to become a publicity chair and did most of the graphic design for this semester’s concert, including doing a lot of work on the profile pictures, creating and printing the audition posters and flyers, and working on the program. Roshni and Heidi were very helpful when it came to designing these, and Roshni especially did a lot of work with editing the program, but there was still a lot I had to learn– such as how to use Photoshop to realistically add someone to the full group photo. I also edited many reels and social media posts for the Ohms and put together some of the video footage on our Instagram page. I would also like to give a huge shoutout to Roshni for organizing our last-minute publicity effort– chalking, booth-ing, popups, a publicity contest, and more –it came in clutch as I had many projects due within the same few days as the semester concert.
Concert
Given that this semester was the 15th anniversary concert, there was so much more to do than a typical concert season. I credit Om with taking care of so many of the concert logistics, such as working with the light and sound company, booking the space and getting the relevant licenses, and organizing catering samosas and chai. He’s truly very talented at planning large events– see the previous blog post and his work planning the Diwalloween showcase. The concert also had three guest groups and many notable arrangements. I also had a lot of fun creating props with Maryanna one weekend in McCormick craft room, which we used for the concert. I also was vocal percussion for the first time for one of the subsets at this concert (I never thought I’d be able to learn how to beatbox when I first joined the Ohms, but I suppose I proved myself wrong!) Afterwards, I heard it was well received, though was longer than anticipated. I really hope that we can go back to Kresge someday, maybe for our 20th anniversary.
Conclusion
All in all, I’d say it was a pretty successful semester. I enjoyed it overall, and am excited for my fourth semester here, and our upcoming performance at Silver Chord Bowl on February 8th!