Rehearsal Space Setup

For those of you who use a storage facility to rehearse how do you arrange your equipment? what other stuff to you bring like small frig, carpet, etc.

Pics would be great.

I don't anymore...but used to....we just set the drums on one end of the room....set up the amps along the perimeter and across from the drums, forming a square that we stood in the middle of....we were able to play at a more relaxed volume, and were able to see each other and interact better. We still use a variation of that setup in my current band...just not in a storage facility.


RB

Did you place anything on the walls and floor to keep the sound under control. We're looking at carpet remnants for the walls and floor just to stop the sound from bouncing off the metal walls.

Carpet helped...if it was a semi-long fiber length...the real flat stuff was only marginally better. We later used some of that soft foam packing material....eggshell, I think it was called. That worked better....but eventually we sprang for some Auralex panels....made just for that problem. The ceilings were high...about 10 to 12 feet....we got a roll of some thick felt material about 3 feet wide... we cut it into banners 3 feet by 10 feet and hung them across the ceiling (10 feet across the room and 3 feet down from the ceiling) about 2 or 3 feet apart, all across the ceiling of the room. This cut down on high reflections and bass artifacts at the ceiling. I looked, but I don't have any pictures that show anything good...sorry.

RB

The place my band practices is basically like a single car garage with a loft.We share it with 3 other bands (one band practices up in the loft, all other 3 practice in the lower area). One guy drums in two bands and he lets my band's drummer use his kit. We share guitar cabs, but people bring their own heads. The bass players have their own rigs. We practice in the covered section (all walls have carpet and foam on them) with the drums at one end, and guitar amps pointing towards the drummer. The bass rig is usually over nearby the drummer and the PA has one speaker pointed towards the drummer, bassist, and pretty much directly at the keyboardist (for the one of the bands - she requires that she hears herself at all times). The other pointed in the opposite direction towards the guitarists.

Our practice space is actually a storage rental space in an industrial park with metal walls. Like I said, all the walls have carpet and foam. If you can't afford that sometimes hanging heavy blankets helps dampen the sound.

We jam in a cramped tiny basement but it works and it's free.

We set up like a stage kinda the drums are on a riser and all the cabs and PA is behind and to the left and right of the drums I have a little trouble at times hearing the other guitarist but I just have to move towards his side a little more and problem solved works well and we can record live off the floor very easily for the singer to write over or to remember parts and what not.

Would be nice ot have more room and a more relaxed atmosphere but for free we are not complaining most places around here (Toronto) cost upwards of 350 - 600 CAD a month.

basically a circular layout works the best, everyones amps pointing in.
if youre rich enough to have wedges, put them in the middle facing out.

vulture2600 said:

basically a circular layout works the best, everyones amps pointing in.

Click to expand...

Yeah.. We recently created a circular layout, with everything pointing to the middle of the practice space and it has served us much better! I actually prefer to not hear bass and other guitar though, because that way it really forces you to play off of the drums / memorize the song. Lots of clubs around here have terrible stage sound systems so you usually get no monitors or just crappy monitors.