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Posted by: SonofDestiny Aug 27 2008, 09:36 PM

Hey guys,

My new band is looking for a room to rehearse in. I've had a couple of rooms that were pure litter. Sorry for the language, but they just were..! I have no idea what was up with those amplifiers. It was just white noise!

What should we pay attention to when picking one? And when we're in there... how do we make sure that it still sounds like music and not total garbage? (Of course, playing good, but what else ) How do you guys do that?


Edited for language /Micke. If there's a need to excuse the langue it's probably not right to start with.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Aug 27 2008, 09:57 PM

How it will sound it's up to you and your ability to adapt to gear.

The studio itself should have:

- toilet
- venting
- air conditioning for summer, and radiators for winter.
- reasonable price
- decent (low) reverberation

- "decent" gear

when you get in a small studio that has tube halfstacks you can usually expect a one dimensional sound, no tone, no definition, nothing. Also small combos are not an option as well. Something in between is the best way to go, like 50 hybrids, or 100W solidstates.

check out also other equipment, like bass rig and PA for the singer. They can be low in quality often.

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Aug 27 2008, 10:08 PM

First of all see if the room is vented properly..Pay attention how the sound proofing is done, you don't want to play in a concrete room full of reverb etc...Than comes the gear, see if its any good..Test the drums, bass rig, guitar amps , and very importantly PA system...See if they work properly and how they sound in that room..Once your in you want to adjust the bass in relation to drums , also guitar amps in relation to each other and versus bass and drums , you want the singer to be pretty loud to hear him properly - do vocals last.You don't want to play loud in a small room that will only deteriorate the sound.. Its all in tone and loudness setup..Start with drums go to bass and than do the rest..Don't compete with fellow guitar player...You want everything to be as quiet as possible still good enough in relation to drums...That should provide the best sound and pleasant working environment..Of course leave some time to dial in the best tone on each of the amps, get to know them...Last but very important - wear ear plugs !!

Posted by: JeroenKole Aug 27 2008, 10:22 PM

one trick I've learned is first and formost. Check your sound make sure everything is adapted to eachother. You won't need to mic the drums and when you know how loud the drums are the rest can adjust the volume of their amps based on how loud the drums are. after that you probably only have to spend 5 minutes each rehearsal on sound check.

Also, as mentioned above don't try to outdo each other. That will help nobody.

I hope this helps

Posted by: Marcus Siepen Aug 28 2008, 11:56 AM

Dumb question from my side... when you rent rehearsal rooms, do you rent them WITH gear????? If a band is looking for a rehearsal room here in Germany all you get is an empty room, isolated if you are lucky, but this is it. If you don't have your own equipment you can meet there for choir sessions, but nobody will give you any instruments or amps here...

Posted by: ZakkWylde Aug 28 2008, 12:01 PM

Yup I didn't get it either. Rehearsal rooms are just empty rooms and you have to bring everything from the amp to the pa yourself.

As for preparing a standard room I would say nail empty egg cartboard on the walls to reduce the reverb.
Something like that (without the eggs)

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Aug 28 2008, 12:08 PM

Well surprisingly here in Serbia you rent the room WITH gear When I think about it , its really hard to find/rent a suitable room without gear Prices vary , about 10e for 2h sessions.

Posted by: Emir Hot Aug 28 2008, 12:15 PM

Same in London. You can chose if you want to rent with their gear or bring your own. Some rooms are really good equiped but many people prefer to bring own amps, drums... Price is about £15-20 per hour. You even have coffe machines and some of them even a bar with drinks (of course not included in the room price ).

Posted by: MickeM Aug 28 2008, 12:18 PM

To Marcus and Zakk, here (in Sweden) you can rent different kinds. Either you get one with gear in it or an empty one. But it's not the way that if there's a room with gear you can't really have it empty. Most common is empty ones though.

We had one of those with gear when we were between rehersal rooms. The room was very well built but the gear not good at all. I think they keep solid state amps so that they get less maintenance compared to tube amps. And they cut some costs on the drum kit and some on the PA etc.

You don't want concrete walls, they give a very sharp sound.
You don't want luminent lights (Right word for it? Gives a lot of distortion, well some at least, and the bad kind... We once had one of those where the flick of the switch was in the corridor and turned on and off the lisghts in all rehersal rooms. Just had to stick with that light.

Carpet under the drumkit so it doesn't wander off make marks in the floor.
You want well isolated walls between yours and the neighnour room. Escaping sound is irritating at the least... unless you're neighbours with Blindguardian or such.
Good ventilation is a must and Toilet is nice like mentioned above. Even rock stars have to go sometimes...
A vending machine is also cool

Posted by: Smells Aug 28 2008, 01:00 PM

rehearsal rooms are not too easy to find in my neck of the woods, we have tried the odd places that are around and vary with price and facilities etc but we always seem to end up back at a dark,damp, musty & smelly (no pun) place that is in the middle of no where, its great as we have the room from 7pm - 11pm (although we lock up and if we over run some then it doesnt matter) its only £8.75 an hour and they provide a PA system only that is more than enough for our needs, other places have provided gear but I still always take and use my own.
the toilet facilites are vast though! just pick any corner of the field that is around it and there ya go! (actually it does have a toilet, but going by the looks of it I`d rather use the field)
no fancy drinks vending machine either, so we bring our own drinks.

its a terrible place, it really is, but at the end of the day I`m not interested in the surroundings, I`m interested in the sound and actually rehearsing our songs etc, and this is the room we always compare with the more "cosy" places we have been to, the sound in the room is very good, dont know what it is, we`re just able to get a much better balance there, seems no matter where you stand in the room you can hear everything thats going on.

I`d suggest trying out places more for sound than facilities, and use your own amps and equipment.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Aug 28 2008, 01:02 PM

What's a vending machine mate ?

Also I'm quite suprised (positively) that you can rent rooms without gear. We are looking for a room like that here, and there are NONE!

Posted by: MickeM Aug 28 2008, 01:23 PM

Maybe I'm using the wrong word but what I mean is a machine where you can buy candy, chocolate bars, sandwiches etc.
And then one for soda and one for coffe too. Gets used a lot by the band I'm in

EDIT: Oh, saw that Smells also mentioned it. Thought the comment were on "my" vending machine. But anyway, there you go.

Posted by: Smells Aug 28 2008, 01:24 PM

correct word mate

Posted by: Marcus Siepen Aug 29 2008, 12:04 PM

Hehe, if you want a rehearsal room next to ours then you don't have to worry about isolation, we rehearse with in ear system, just as we play live, so the volume is not that high when we rehearse (which used to be completely different back when we rehearsed normally).
As the others already mentioned, isolating the room properly is very important to make it sound good, if you don't isolate it enough the sound will be very messy and loud, but if you overdo it you can also easily kill the sound. Common things that you can try are those egg cartons on the wall, carpets are also fine.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Aug 29 2008, 01:18 PM

That's a very interesting solution Marcus. I've never thought about ear system for rehearsals. I suppose you use wireless monitoring, but can it be done with regular studio headphones? Are there any disadvantages of this system? What kind of gear do you need for it?

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Aug 29 2008, 05:19 PM

Wow can you elaborate on that Marcus ? I never thought of it before (rehearsing with ear pieces) but it makes perfect sense !! How do you go about it, do you mic drums and every instrument etc ? This is a really interesting approach

Posted by: MickeM Aug 29 2008, 05:27 PM

I'm curious too!

Posted by: kjutte Aug 30 2008, 01:25 PM

Can rent rooms with amps in norway. mixers too.
Oh, and drums.

But you gotta bring your effects, guitars, etc.

Posted by: audiopaal Aug 30 2008, 05:35 PM

I need to move to London

Here you're lucky if you can find a place to practice

Posted by: Canis Aug 30 2008, 06:10 PM

That's what's great about living on the country, as I do I can just go over to a friend of mine who lives in the middle of nowhere, and we don't have to care aobut neighbours

That way we have a rehersal room that's vented, has a fridge, TV, good sound, and even has a view over the beautiful Norwegian nature =)

Not that I'm in a band, but me and him get together now and then just to jam ^^

Posted by: Marcus Siepen Aug 31 2008, 01:07 PM

Basically we rehearse in a way as if we would be playing live. So yes, all the instruments have to be miced of course, they are sent into our monitor mixing console (the very same one that we use on stage), there we can mix individual sounds for every musician and then send them wireless to our in ear packs. The big advantage of rehearsing like this is that every musician can have his own mix, there are no interferences from the amplifiers (we could even put all the amps into a different room, we don't hear ANYTHING coming directly from the amps, we only hear our in ear headphones) and no interferences with mixes from other bandmembers. On stage this is even more precious, because I can walk wherever I want on stage, the sound that I am hearing doesn't change AT ALL, no matter if I am standing right in front of my own amp, in front of the drums or wherever. When you want to try this in your rehearsals you can of course also use normal headphones, you have to pay attention to the cable length then though. The only disadvantage that I see, and I don't really consider it to ba a disadvantage, is that oyu have to talk into a microphone if you want to talk to each other, but I can perfectly live with this