Apartment silent band practices idea

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Dimmi

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My band is having a tough time finding a quiet place to practice...so I was thinking about this for a while now...
How about...

A POD for guitar
A J-Station (or whatever) for bass
An electronic drumset....yeah, for drums
A keyboard for synths
A mic for vocals

All of this goes into the mixer...
From the mixer out, into one of those tiny headphones amps.
Each person in the band gets a pair of headphones and everyone
can jam like hell til next morning, not worrying about the neighbors (well singing isn't bass...it dont go thru walls as much...so they can cope with singing).

The whole band would be able to hear a good monitoring mix from the headphones, just like having the stage monitors during practice. No one would be able to use the "I can't hear myself" excuse anymore.

Has anyone ever done this?
I can't wait to put this together myself.

The only problem I foresee so far is the fact that one's ears will eventually get tired of wearing headphones...although, well, again, probably depends on how much these phones cost.

What do you think? Would this work?
 
Well....it would do for practicing, I suppose.
 
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DUDE!! was joking... :D

Synth and keyboards are kinda close these days... People hardly know the difference. Nevermind.

Your idea is perfectly workable. A guy that lives above me got one of those electronic drum thingies. Sounds ok with the headphones, and pretty ok in my room too. Just a little ticking...

The people that walk by your door and hear the singer only accompaigned by ticking will laugh however... And it also depends on the kindof muxic you play. Those tools don't work for every style...

The better the headphones, the better... And rehearsing with real amps and real drums is harder on your ears, believe me.
 
Well, if you have to buy all that stuff, you'll probably be better off renting all of the surrounding appartments. great for partying to. (if you have friends, or a turtle)
 
That's exactly what I've been doing in my studio. I play EDrums, and I have a Pod, a J-station, and several preamps to pick from for the other players. Everything goes to the board, and I distribute the rough stereo mix from there back to all the playing positions, in addition to tracking it.

I do one thing that is even sicker, though. I also distribute the direct out from everyone's instrument and vocals pack to their playing position as well, and I have a little Behringer 602 mixer at each place, which is used as their own private headphone amp. So, for example, the lead guitar has the stereo mix on one input, his guitar on one, and his vocals on one. I have the pair, my drums, and my vox, and so on. In this manner, there's no downtime from someone who says they can't hear themselves: they can always turn themselves up with the knob they have right there, and set up a mix that suits them. I can't even _tell_ you how much time that saves.

I don't have a noise problem, per se. The house is quite isolated, and the basement acoustical treatments have worked well, since the room was purpose-built for recording. I'm just getting older, and I just don't care to play at your average rock stage level anymore. So the loudest thing in the room is the vocal work- and that does get pretty loud, so you may not save yourself that much grief in an apartment. It also ain't cheap: but it certainly works for me. Your mileage may vary.

I posted some pictures of this rig back in May, in a thread about studio wiring: http://www.homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?threadid=25365

Here's an old picture (before all the acoustical treatments were installed) of one of the playing positions, from that thread: http://www.homerecording.com/bbs/attachment.php?postid=162013
 
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Well, concerning my equipment...The only pieces missing from *my* setup right now are a drumset and a second pod-like device for bass. So I think I am gonna go that route. That Roland V-Club drum set looks good.

I imagine there are a lot of people out there for whom this would be the only choice. Having been to a few late concerts, I find more and more popular bands using amp modeling and phones for monitoring instead of stage monitors. All of that is happening despite all the raging arguments that "modeling will never replace real tubes." For rehearsal it'll do.

And hey, about these people walking by my door and laughing...I'll let em laugh....as long as they don't rant to the office ;)
 
On the "ear fatigue" side of things: as it turns out, the very inexpensive behind-the-head Sony walkman-style runner's phones work very well indeed (and are sweat-resistant). These are the ones that hook loghtly over the top of the ears, and have moderately large earpieces that rest against them, but are very open to the environment. These only cost about $20 a pop, and remarkably seem to work much better than expensive studio cans for rehearsal purposes. The big advantage is that they are so open: people don't have to take them off to talk, as they would with sealed phones. You can get to the point where you forget you have them on: they just create this virtual space around you from the board as you play.

The only exception may be the bassist, who will probably demand closed back phones to preserve all the nuances of their tone (and also have their heads removed by the kick drum, of course). I curently use 7506s for the bassist, and the cheeseball jogman headphones for everyone else. The slight bass rolloff doesn't seem to bother anyone else...

You'll also still have to address the mechanical vibrations from the kick drum trigger, using a floating platform or other means. But this technique is certainly worth a try, in terms of keeping the neighbors happy!
 
Hey Skippy, your comment about the kick drum trigger sort of alarmed me just now. You really think that could be a problem? I mean, not that it's a real bass drum... But heck, you may be right.

I have played a Roland V-Club set once at a store and I dont recall noticing any significant mechanical pounding from the kick pad. You really think it's that loud?

Gotta go back to that store and check that out...
 
Yes. It may not be a real kick drum, but there's nothing to stop you from kicking it every bit as hard: and the mass of your leg coming down on the pedal, and the energy delivered by the beater into the trigger, is nothing to sneeze at. It doesn't have the resonance and acoustic volume of a real kick, but the beater transient is exactly as large as it would be with a beater contacting a head on a real drum (or it wouldn't feel like a kick, and would therefore be very hard to play).

You won't be the first person to run into this: it has been discussed here once or twice, and is also a permanent topic on the Roland V-drum site. It may not seem very noisy when playing in isolation in the store (probably on a concrete slab floor), but most drummers will dig into the kick pretty hard when playing in ensemble. If you're on the second floor of a wood-framed stucture, you have a problem on your hands.

Different drummers' styles, and different kick trigger designs, will couple more or less noise into the floor. But if the drummer is heavy handed and you have a bent-beater (downwards) kick trigger, mechanical vibrations will represent your biggest challenge. Just be aware of it, and ready to build a floated platform if needed.

Isolating a drummer is a right bitch: I oughta know, since I are one. (;-)
 
Hehe. I wonder if a very thick rug/piece of rubber under the kick will tame the vibrations. Although, I guess I should search for these topics on the V-Drums forum now...

Skippy, by the way, just wondering, if the headphone cables get in the way a lot. I am myself used to taking phones on and off from under the strap while recording, but it may just be me. Have you ever thought of a wireless solution?
 
Not well enough. The hot setup for the Band On A Budget appears to be to find a dead king-size mattress, and build a 3/4" plywood platform that goes on *top* of it. Other solutions have used old tires, thick layers of neoprene foam, yadda yadda: the standard acoustic treatments that you'd use to minimize mechanical coupling. You want the drums set up on top of a significant mass, and then you want to decouple that mass as completely as you possibly can from the actual floor.

It'd be so easy if drummers could retrain themselves that you just don't have to _hit_ EDrums as hard. But once you have other people in the room, you' re going to fall right back to muscle memory> your lizard-brain is going to have you playing them the way you've always played drums, whatever that might be. In my case, that is best described as *absurdly hard*. Intellectually, I'm agonizingly aware that I don't need to do that: but once the tune's counted off, I still sweat like a hog, and hammer away as if I'm trying to compete with stacks of Marshalls. It's just damned sad being a Neanderthal. Your drummer may not have that failing, and your music may not push people to play that hard. But you need to be aware of the exposure. See http://www.vdrums.com and search on "kick vibration" for more detail.

Wireless headphone solutions: they are certainly out there, but I haven't been very interested. Reasons: cost, low battery life, fragility, dead spotting, and an inability to operate several sets of them with different mixes for each. You could use the infrared ones if you just wanted to ship one mix to the room, of course. That'd work well, and should not exhibit the deadspotting that the RF versions do.

I haven't run into troubles with the headphone cables. It might take each player a few minutes to learn to cope: but if they are ever going into a studio to record for distribution, they're going to need to develop that skill sooner or later! Might as well be sooner.
 
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Hey Skippy, thanks for all your input. I do feel like I am a few years wiser now. I think I am going to get a V-Club set after my next payday (this coming Wednesday).

Already breaking my head on how to build that vibration absorbing platform... That will be the toughest part. And I still hoped to have my living room looking all sleek while having my "studio" in it. Something that is a product of my heavy manual labor has yet to look pretty...

The longer I live (I am young), the more disappointed I get in the way the modern society treats musicians. The Musicians, the ones that *keep it going.*
 
Well, by all means try it without a floated platform to start with. You may have a (relatively) quiet drummer, and have no problems at all... I know that any group that I played with that had neighbors underneath me would be in very big trouble indeed, but like I said: I'm a Neanderthal. Keep the faith, and let us know how it goes!
 
Thats how I have been recording my first tracks, bass, key, drums and a vocal track for cueing. Then we replace the vocal track and add whatever or replace the bass with a bass through an amp etc. Been working like that for awhile and it works well.
 
Damn! Skippy!

Hey Skippy just a question.......
Im looking at the shot of your guitar with the J-station.
One: How are you conecting all that I mean is the J going into the wall plate and a signal coming back to the mixer for monitor?
Or is it all going thru the mixer on the stand and if so how that all work?
Two: what kinda mixer is that and can you mount it on a mic stand without and x-tra parts?
thanks I know these are kinda dumb questions.
-reco
 
Take a quick look at this thread: http://www.homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?threadid=25365

Most of what you ask is discussed there in some detail. But basically, I ran runs of 8-pair snake cable from the main mix position to individual boxes at each playing position back when we built the room. There are photos of a lot of the hardware in that thread, so you can look through it and see what I had in mind. Basically, all the main studio wiring in buried in the walls, out of sight.

On that wall plate, I put 2 pairs on XLRs for mic lines, and the other 6 have TRS connectors to act as direct sends and returns. So the mic goes on pair 1 to go to the main board, and the send from the J goes on Pair 3. For returns, the direct out from the main board with the post-preamp mic signal goes on pair 4, the direct out from the main board with the J's signal goes on pair 5 (or more usually, I just steal one of the two outputs locally without bothering with a direct out), and the stereo rough mix from the main board is on pairs 7 and 8. So the wall plate provides connectivity for both sends and returns to the main mixer.

The monitor mixer gets the stereo mix from pairs 7/8 on one input, the vox on pair 4 on another, and either pair 5 or the J's loose output on a third, and you're done. And no rope-salad clogging up the room, which I hate. Anyway, it's very flexible: the main mix and each individual monitor mix is completely independent, so I don't have to waste time with everybody wanting to be louder than everybody else in the mix. You want more of you, turn the friggin' knob! (;-)

The mixer stand is just a mic stand with a ratchet tilter on top. I got some gooseneck mount flanges (the female threaded flanges you'd use for a podium mic mount), and just screw them onto the back of .125" aluminum sheets that I'd bent like an old-style flat metal music stand (so that the mixer wouldn't slide off when the stand was tilted). That small stand in that photo is now at the bass player's position: I have a larger one that has room for the J or the Pod as well as the mixer that is much more amenable to guitar use...

The mixer is a Behringer MX602: nothing special, and those things are really only useful as a headphone amp. But dirt cheap when you buy 4 at a time: this is probably their ideal use.

Anyway, the room was designed for efficiency. Once the upfront installation effort was done, actual _use_ of the room doesn't take much time. You can walk in and wail, basically: the setup to the board for tracking is already established by default...

But your mileage may vary. Look through that thread for some other ideas! I've already concluded that I screwed up and didn't run enough capacity to each location...

*Next* time I do this, I'll run 12 pairs, 2 runs of Cat5 (ethernet), 2 runs of RG6 coax (SPDIF), 2 runs of MIDI, and 2 strings of glass fiber optic (whatever) to each location. Just like I said in the other thread: wire is _cheap_ when the walls are open. My futureproofing didn't look far enough into the future...

Sigh.
 
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