Rehearsal space

roundthebend · October 2022

I live in Peterborough, a modest little city with a reasonably vibrant live music scene - a dozen pubs or more that have music every week.

Recently, a decent sized rehearsal space closed down because the landlord wanted the building back. That leaves us with a small facility with only 3 rooms. There's not much else in nearby towns either. The remaining place is fully booked October and November and I expect will be oversubscribed for the foreseeable.

So, where are people rehearsing? I guess some people are good enough that they can practise at home alone and pull it off at gigs.

I'd be tempted to set up a facility, off only to have a space for myself and my own band. I see brand new, small, industrial units for £10k /yr but then all the extra on top would make it quite a tight business to succeed.

If anybody here runs a rehearsal space I'd be interested in business tips.

Danny1969 · October 2022

I ran a large recording studio that was also used for rehearsals, mainly in the evening. We had 2 very large rooms and both rooms were booked out solid in the evenings from 6 to 9 and 9 to 12.
Each room had an HK PA, air con and various amps that could be used for free as well as 2 Pear Export kits

The bills were pretty savage.
Rent 2K a month
Rates 1K a month
Then you got electric, gas, 2 lots of water, alarm monitoring fee, waste collection fee, insurance ... it just goes on and on. Basically a large money pit.

To tun a facility successfully it needs to be the right kind of building in the right place. Preferably a brick building (not tin clad) in an area with few neighbours and plenty of space for parking .... 2 bands can mean 10 cars outside.

Most commercial spaces will require a lease, mine was 10 years but we built in a break clause at 5 which we were able to use to stop losing money. There's normally also a largish deposit ... 5K I think was ours.

You need a budget for equipment that breaks or goes missing. Amps will go wrong and hi hat clutches will disappear.

Selling tea and coffee will be a good earner

We lost loads of money on the venture, about 100K but it was a great time and I met so many people doing it who became great friends and band members.

Stuckfast · October 2022

Must be loads of farm buildings within 5 miles of Peterborough, I'd have thought you could find something a fair bit cheaper like that, and most bands will be driving anyway because they need to bring their kit.

roundthebend · October 2022

Stuckfast said:

Must be loads of farm buildings within 5 miles of Peterborough, I'd have thought you could find something a fair bit cheaper like that, and most bands will be driving anyway because they need to bring their kit.

That's what I've looked for, but they don't seem to crop up anywhere. Maybe I need to enquire with an estate agent.
I used to play with a band who had a permanent room which they could use 24/7 and leave their kit there. It was on a farm not far from where I live. That would be ideal if the price was right.

PolarityMan · October 2022

Danny1969 said:

I ran a large recording studio that was also used for rehearsals, mainly in the evening. We had 2 very large rooms and both rooms were booked out solid in the evenings from 6 to 9 and 9 to 12.
Each room had an HK PA, air con and various amps that could be used for free as well as 2 Pear Export kits

The bills were pretty savage.
Rent 2K a month
Rates 1K a month
Then you got electric, gas, 2 lots of water, alarm monitoring fee, waste collection fee, insurance ... it just goes on and on. Basically a large money pit.

To tun a facility successfully it needs to be the right kind of building in the right place. Preferably a brick building (not tin clad) in an area with few neighbours and plenty of space for parking .... 2 bands can mean 10 cars outside.

Most commercial spaces will require a lease, mine was 10 years but we built in a break clause at 5 which we were able to use to stop losing money. There's normally also a largish deposit ... 5K I think was ours.

You need a budget for equipment that breaks or goes missing. Amps will go wrong and hi hat clutches will disappear.

Selling tea and coffee will be a good earner

We lost loads of money on the venture, about 100K but it was a great time and I met so many people doing it who became great friends and band members.

Some places round here would have tried to fit 4 rooms in your main one though!

BusheySi · October 2022

I used to do this in London. Hard business. On top of the rent there's bills, rates, and the arseache of dealing with people trying to negotiate the price (no mate, I don't want to swap your records for my rehearsal studio). Factor in damage to drum kits, amp servicing every so often, and depending where you are, people kicking your door in to knick your stuff.

That said, it was fun at the time, I met some cool people and it meant I got to rehearse pretty much whenever I wanted. But as a going concern? Nope.

Stratavarious · October 2022

I have a 5 piece rehearse in a conservatory.. ekit or cajon.. and we fit an 8 or 9 piece function group in a garage… including a full drum kit.

If your players can control their volume or you can DI modellers and bass & keys through a desk, it can be compact.

Danny1969 · October 2022

One thing that people might not be aware of or be able to build their rooms to handle is how loud some bands like to rehearse. You can take a typical unit and divide it up into rooms using stud walls and plasterboard but you won't get enough sound isolation to cope with a loud metal band on one room and an acoustic trio in another. It's not just the volume, it's the lower frequencies some bands tune to. There was a great metalcore band from Southampton called Desolated used to rehearse at my place in the large loading bay room. They were basically banned from their local rehearsal place due to the volume they played at.

To get the required isolation between the 2 rooms I built the 2nd room 1.2M away from the first room and filled the void completely full with a whole trucks worth of Rockwool acoustic insulation .. laid on the ground like paving slabs and built up layer by layer unit it reached the 5M height.

This was the Live room 1, completely built by me and 2 mates from scratch.

Image: https://www.thesuperheroesonline.co.uk/2020/lroom6.jpg

You can see about 2 thirds of it in that picture.

And this is Desolated using Live room 2 for their video

Here in Portsmouth we have a great place called Casemates, run by a mate of mine. He has taken on a basic rehearsal facility and expanded it with more rooms, licensed bar, kitchen with hot pizza's, pasties, cakes etc. He sells's cables, strings, accessories, records ... it's a great example of how to make a profitable rehearsal studio.

Jalapeno · October 2022

Rehearsed in an old shipping container on a farm once. Very sweaty exxperience, but cheap !

Whistler · October 2022

Danny1969 said:

One thing that people might not be aware of or be able to build their rooms to handle is how loud some bands like to rehearse. You can take a typical unit and divide it up into rooms using stud walls and plasterboard but you won't get enough sound isolation to cope with a loud metal band on one room and an acoustic trio in another. It's not just the volume, it's the lower frequencies some bands tune to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B_UYYPb-Gk

The first 2 minutes of the video for Run DMC and Aerosmith's single Walk This Way is an excellent showcase for adjacent rehearsal rooms and the crosstalk @Danny1969 describes. The rest of the video is on stage so outside of this topic.

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