SPECIAL: Rehearsal Room Part 1

 Hardly any other topic in music is as comprehensive in terms of style and the personal orientation of the musicians as the topic of rehearsal space or finding a rehearsal room. No matter what kind of creative output you want to present to the listener, music is inevitably linked to the propagation of sound waves and when it comes to enjoyment or inedibility, every person has a completely different idea of what they want to expose to their hearing and what they don't. In short, you need a location where you can give free rein to your creativity, free from external disruptive influences.

In this special we want to talk about the search for a rehearsal room and the special features of such a room. Another special deals with the acoustics of a rehearsal room, its equipment and the technical implementation. But first of all, how do you even get a rehearsal space?

The fairy tale of the perfect rehearsal room

I don't know about you, but throughout my career I've always had to make more or less compromises when it comes to a rehearsal space. The problem is rooted in the fact that on the one hand there can be infernal volumes that need to be mitigated and on the other hand there are musicians who do not have much financial flexibility to pay for this rehearsal room, especially at the beginning of their career or the journey to the same.

That's why when I was a teenager there was always the saying “no matter how dirty, dirty or moldy a room is, you can still rent it out as a rehearsal room”. I rehearsed in the attics of disused grain mills with 83 steps, had a storage room next to a pigsty closed by the veterinary office and, as a highlight, rehearsed in walled-off rooms under a railway line, including an undetected water intrusion, so that the mattresses from behind were moldy in all fungal colors. It goes without saying that none of the rooms had heating and that in the winter the rooms were laboriously heated with gas burners, which swallowed up all the oxygen.

Looking back, I can only shake my head when I think about what they had to put themselves through at the time, but there was simply no other alternative than to bite into these more than just sour apples. The “culprit” of this problem is quickly identified, although in this case it was inevitably the drums. E-drums didn't exist yet and if you wanted to even remotely reproduce the stage volume, an unbelievable volume immediately developed in the rooms, which were usually far too small, which made any form of differentiated listening impossible.

This is in no way meant to be reproachful, as acoustic drums were invented at that time in order to generate the highest possible volume. If you go and accuse this instrument of being too loud, you are doing more than just injustice to this instrument and its users.

We will discuss the extent to which virtual solutions can provide a remedy here in another special. Today it's all about where and how to find a rehearsal room where high volumes are possible without getting on other people's nerves too much.


1.) Rehearsals in private rooms

Even if it is hard to believe, the majority of all rehearsals can be held in private rooms. If we assume a free-standing building that has the appropriate minimum distances from neighboring houses, acoustic instruments such as acoustic guitars, double bass, moderate percussion instruments and unamplified vocals, for example, move within a sound level range of up to 90 dB. This corresponds to the noise of a busy street or a lawnmower.

If this room has normal masonry and modern double or triple glazing, the noise emitted to the outside is not a problem within the legal framework, provided you stick to the midday rest period. In Germany there is no nationwide regulation for midday rest, but many municipalities and cities have their own regulations that specify a rest period over midday. These local regulations are usually set out in the respective noise protection regulations or municipal statutes. The midday rest period is intended to allow citizens to have an undisturbed rest and, above all, limits noisy activities that could disturb the neighborhood, such as music.

The typical lunchtime rest time is between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., but can vary depending on the location. In some areas, the nap time may be 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. or another time slot. It is important to find out about the specific regulations regarding midday rest from the relevant municipality or city administration, as these can vary from place to place. In addition, rental agreements or house rules may also contain special agreements on rest periods that must be adhered to by the residents of an apartment building or residential complex. The same applies to the night quiet, which usually applies from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., but can also vary depending on the municipality.

If the ensemble forces you to work at higher volumes, most people are drawn to the basement of their house. What seems better at first glance can turn out to be a fallacy at second glance, since you also have to completely hermetically seal a basement room in order to benefit from sound insulation. Even a slightly leaky window or a poorly closing door with a tiny gap allows the sound to “squeeze through” and destroy the supposedly better location in the ground.

What many musicians don't know or shy away from because of the perceived effort involved is the room-in-room construction, which, if implemented correctly, can make even a rented apartment on the second floor so "quiet" that you can no longer hear drums acoustically in the neighboring apartment can perceive. The room-in-room principle is based on building a second room in an existing room and acoustically decoupling it from the outside room, i.e. the ceiling, walls, floor, windows and doors are actually installed twice and separated from each other by vibrating connections.

The result is that the inner space in which the high volume takes place begins to vibrate, but cannot pass this vibration on to the outer space. This means that the sound is dead in the space between the two rooms and does not reach the outside. All professional recording studios are built according to this principle in order to be able to withstand extremely high volumes 24-7 without disturbing the neighbors or other residents.

But be careful, even a single nail that penetrates both walls will destroy the entire construction by acting as a sound conductor. There is a variety of relevant specialist literature available to buy and there are also some very good video tutorials on YouTube from which you can learn the basics.


2.) Rehearsals in public buildings

Another way to get rehearsal rooms is in public buildings, such as youth centers, schools or community centers.

Even if you have the problem here that you may have to make compromises regarding opening times and access options, you still have the advantage that if the responsible priest, teacher or leader is a fan of your music, you can get a very cheap one, usually too well-kept space can come.

In return for the space, which could sometimes even be used for free, there were only one or two concerts per year in my time where you had to play with your band at some performance for free.

In return, you not only had a clean room, some of which even had a cleaning staff, but the institutions were insured and what should not be forgotten: the instruments were comparatively safe and were at least largely secured against theft or vandalism.

The disadvantage of these rooms is that the respective rooms are usually acoustically comparatively unsuitable for louder types of music. Converting the room in terms of acoustic conditions is also usually difficult, as in most cases the rooms are handed over as they are and have to be returned in this format.

Structural measures that are not easy to remove are usually not necessary in such rooms, which means that you may have to make do with a reverberant room, which has a negative impact on the overall sound.



3 rehearsals in rented rooms

However, the majority of rehearsal rooms will probably be managed through regular rental agreements. The shades that can arise here range from small hobby rentals with no intention of making any profit to highly professional ones.


a.) Rehearsal room rental on a friendly basis

Everyone probably knows someone who has a space that they don't really need. Be it an old garage, an old barn, a cellar or storage room that he would like to make available as a rehearsal room in a friendly environment.

This has advantages and disadvantages.

The advantages are that you are probably well served with very little money in the form of a flat rate electricity fee or other small charges and you may have a room that is close by and can be accessed relatively quickly for little money.

The disadvantage is that everything that is in the realm of friendship can turn around at some point. I once had this case many years ago, when the landlord regularly said in the evening after the third beer that he absolutely had to intervene in the rehearsal room, be it as a spectator, listener or advisor and of course you couldn't just throw him out due to the incredibly favorable conditions. Difficult situation that everyone probably has to sort out for themselves.

The question of liability, for example in the event of burglary, theft, fire or other things, should also be clarified with the landlord to see to what extent his insurance applies in this regard, or you should take out additional insurance yourself.

b.) Rehearsal room rental in a commercial context

When it comes to renting out space commercially, the situation is basically the same as on the open housing market. Every tenant tries to get a room as cheaply as possible and every landlord tries to get as much money out of the landlord as possible. This is no different when renting rehearsal rooms.

Many years ago I once had the situation near Mannheim when a huge warehouse was divided by a professional investor into many small rehearsal room plots, including a large parking lot and a small attached music store.

The system was great in principle, but the plots were only separated by simple plaster walls. This means that as soon as the next room made even a little bit more noise or the drummer played a little more dynamically, you had to shout in your own room to make each other understandable. As expected, insulating the walls with simple carpets or similar didn't bring any improvement at all.

The risk of theft is also always a problem when there is a large concentration of rehearsal rooms. I don't know how many times we've had a microphone stolen simply because someone went to the bathroom and didn't lock the rehearsal room or left the door open.

On the plus side, with a commercial landlord you have the advantage that there is a minimum of comfort and hygiene. A commercial rental definitely includes sanitary facilities, water access and usually also protection in terms of distribution boxes for electricity, etc. This is all the more important because central heating is rarely available in commercial areas and in winter you often have to protect 2 oil radiators plus a backline in terms of fuse distribution. In this context, it is also important to pay attention to the agreed electricity supply. Is there a flat rate or does the room have a separate meter?

In addition, a commercial provider usually has appropriate parking space, so that you can easily load and unload your equipment when an upcoming gig.

Many people will probably be familiar with the bunkers from the Second World War that still exist in the Rhine-Main area and the Ruhr area, and whose demolition would have cost so many millions that it was decided to turn these reinforced concrete monsters into rehearsal rooms. These are now managed by professional landlords and are actually rented primarily to music bands.

As long as you keep the ventilation flaps closed, the issue of noise in such rooms is of course no problem at all with 1.50 m reinforced concrete ceilings, walls and floors. But you have a perpetual ventilation problem in these rooms. Another problem is the fact that you can never, I emphasize, never really get a room like this warm and you would leave the heating running for what feels like a year. In addition, the rooms are always slightly musty because almost 90 years of moisture have accumulated in the cracks.

Everyone has to find out for themselves to what extent they feel comfortable in such spaces. I spent many years in rooms like this and learned to appreciate and hate many things at the same time.


4.) Rehearsals in the rehearsal/recording studio

Probably the most luxurious way to rehearse is to work in one of the recording rooms of a recording studio or a rehearsal studio. This is particularly useful if, for example, you are preparing for a tour or just holding spontaneous rehearsals, which also means that you can quickly set up and dismantle your equipment.

For my part, I often rehearsed in the former Abbey Road Institute, now Studio 301, a very good, highly professional studio, which I was able to access because I knew the owner and one of the institute's teachers very well.

The big advantage here is of course to be found in the professional sound insulation and the professional acoustics of the room, but you also have to always keep in mind that you have to go behind the regular recording studio operation, i.e. H. You always have to coordinate your rehearsal and working times with the studio company.

In the second part of the rehearsal room special, we will cover everything that a rehearsal room has to offer in terms of operation, acoustics and technology once you have finally found your dream room.