As the first in a series of posts about results from our Collegiate Music Facility Information Project, Byron Harrison of TALASKE discusses how practice rooms can be more perfect. The observations and comments noted are based on responses from 78 schools.

It is not unheard of for music educators and music students to refer to practice rooms as “practice cells.” Do they really feel imprisoned?

This is unfortunate, given the long hours that students spend practicing. The environment of the individual practice room should be friendly to the eyes and ears.

Having spent quite a bit of time in practice rooms ourselves and having designed many of these rooms, we have a good idea if what musicians need from their practice rooms: sufficient availability, adequate space, a decent piano, freedom from noise disturbance, and an acoustic environment suitable for the instrument or music being practiced. The latter requires proper room dimensions and finishes.

Seeking to learn more about the educator’s impressions of their facilities, our recent Collegiate Music Facility Information Project surveyed music school executives about many aspects of their buildings, including practice rooms.

Here is some of what we have learned:

Schools that reported satisfaction with how many practice rooms they have, indicated, on average, 4.5 full-time undergraduate students per practice room. (This is a common metric used in planning music school buildings. With a lower number there is, theoretically, greater availability of practice rooms). Schools reporting dissatisfaction with their quantity of practice rooms averaged over 10 students per practice room.

What surprised us about the trends in quantity of practice rooms was the relationship to overall enrollment: larger schools reported more students per practice room. With our initial survey of schools, there is an apparent trend that larger schools have more students per practice room. In fact, a linear regression of our data indicates that for every 100 additional full-time undergraduate students, the number of students per practice room goes up by 1.75. Why is this ratio of students to rooms not constant, regardless of school size? We will continue to observe this apparent distinction between large and small schools as we look toward our 2010 survey.

Another surprise was that the size of individual practice rooms was not reported to be a strong factor in respondents’ satisfaction with their practice rooms. The median size of practice rooms, overall, was about 60 sq.ft. Those who indicated that they were very satisfied with the practice rooms overall, had only a slightly higher median response (64 sq.ft).

These two attributes, quantity and size, were indicated as the best features of practice rooms, overall.

The most reported worst characteristics of practice rooms were sound isolation and aesthetics. Over half of all responses indicated poor sound isolation between rooms!

Another surprise for us was that respondents were generally apathetic about background noise. Only 9% of schools indicated that background noise was a problem. (This was a general sentiment for not only practice rooms, but also faculty studios and rehearsal spaces.) This is an interesting discovery, as considerable effort and expense can be expended in making these spaces very quiet and free from lighting and heating/air conditioning systems noise. The missing link in the correlation of our survey results with actual objective measurement of background noise.

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