Jump to content

Practicing in New York City (Noise!)


lotspoop

Recommended Posts

  • Members

I might be moving to New York City within a year and I was wondering how musicians in NYC practice their instrument or with a band. I'm a drummer and I also like to play keyboards. I imagine most places to live that are affordable are apartments. Is NYC such a noisy place that it's to be expected and neighbors might not care too much? Or will I never be able to find a place that tolerates the noise?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

I might be moving to New York City within a year and I was wondering how musicians in NYC practice their instrument or with a band. I'm a drummer and I also like to play keyboards. I imagine most places to live that are affordable are apartments. Is NYC such a noisy place that it's to be expected and neighbors might not care too much? Or will I never be able to find a place that tolerates the noise?

 

 

I play keys in a band and when we need to practice with our drummer, we'll sometimes rent a practice space.

 

We've used these places, as they are easily accessible by subway (we're scattered between Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn):

 

http://www.smashny.com/home.html

 

http://www.ultrasoundrehearsal.com/home.htm

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I live in New York, and over the last eight years, trying to play music and get recording done has required a mandatory embrace of headphones, and Line 6 Pods to record guitar and bass.

 

My band, Atoms to Suns, has had practice space rented by the month and by the hour. I love Smash, where we currently practice, because of their busted up Marshalls with speaker cabs that frequently only have one speaker working. Meanwhile, you may find all the knobs ripped off the heads. Have fun dialing in your sound!

 

 

There are no good options in NYC. I've come the conclusion that while NYC is great for finding musicians, it sucks for bands. The cost, the compromises, the competition - sometimes I wish I was trying to launch this thing out of a more hospitable city. I'm becoming a bitter man.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Thanks for the info and those links. I greatly appreciate it. I live in Athens, GA right now which is a very band friendly town. I'm fortunate enough to have had two places to play my drums (loudly) for the whole almost 6 years I've lived here. I live in a duplex right now and my neighbors are pretty cool about it but I have taken efforts to sound proof a little.

 

I can see NYC will be quite a change. But it's what I expected.

 

So I take it stand-alone housing simply does not exist close to the city? Or if it does, it's not in the just-out-of-college-and-broke price range.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

It's way too expensive and rarely exists, if you're talking about NYC. Some people have lofts over by sort of where the bridge meets Brooklyn (I can't remember what the area is called, but someone will know what I'm talking about), and with some of the lofts, you can make a racket. It's probably prohibitively expensive, though, but bears checking into.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...