<p>What schools of music have the best practice rooms (or, the worst)? Ideally, practice rooms should be:</p>
<p>1) Available (for non majors/minors too)
2) Safe to get to/from at night
3) Central to housing
4) Good sound insulation
5) Good temperature & ventilation
6) Aesthetically pleasing (large enough, clean, smells okay, some with windows)
7) Pianos in repair and in-tune
8) Comfortable seat
9) Lockers available nearby for instruments
10) Good acoustics</p>
<p>I think you are describing heaven for music majors with your list. Potsdam Crane School of music: pianos in practice rooms all are Steinways and are tuned regularly. Lockers are available but not certain if available for nonmajors. Safe campus and there is a dorm next to the school of music-Knowles. Very safe campus-rural area. They are constructing a fine arts building that will connect with the original school and it should be ready Fall of 2013 or Spring 2014. When it’s open, it will greatly expand the number and aesthetics of practice rooms available. Existing practice rooms are in the basement so no windows looking outside. They are large enough to practice with a double bass. They reserve rooms for Harp majors and piano majors. These are larger and newer.</p>
<p>Bard: beautiful new practice building in addition to practice rooms scattered across campus</p>
<p>Boston U: renovation of what used to look like the set of a horror movie into a set of nice and extra-nice rooms, some with digital recording capability built in</p>
<p>CIM: lots of rooms, although they may not meet the aesthetic requirement</p>
<p>Gettysburg: some nice rooms with windows, but the reallly interesting one is the space age acoustic chamber</p>
<p>Hartt: some rooms have been renovated but D says she likes the acoustics in the ugly ones better</p>
<p>Ithaca: lots of rooms in little hallways</p>
<p>Oberlin: all rooms have windows, which is a nice touch</p>
<p>Peabody: can’t beat the convenience factor, since the dorm is attached to the building where the practice rooms are</p>
<p>Juilliard: well, recently we were in a car circling and circling a 5-square-block area of our city’s downtown, desperate for a parking spot, any parking spot. Every time we turned a corner we saw another car pulling into a just-emptied space. Foiled again! My daughter remarked, “This reminds me of looking for a practice room at Juilliard.”</p>
<p>UNT-2 buildings across from music building. Belmont-kids practicing in empty classrooms at night due to lack of practice rooms</p>
<p>I’ve attempted to practice in more than a dozen schools of music now, and the school that really stood out to me in terms of practice facilities was University of Denver. Nice space, decent acoustics, elevators and vending nearby, and many of the rooms had electronics in-suite to record and adjust various settings.</p>
<p>The worst, by far, no comparison, was NEC.</p>
<p>I can speak to Oberlin’s practice rooms, at least the ones not in the new Jazz building.</p>
<p>1) I have never been there right before juries, but have noticed multiple available practice rooms whenever I walked through the Con. Being a singer myself as well as the parent of a student there at the time, I warmed up there a time or two and never had a problem getting into a practice room.</p>
<p>2) Yes - we are talking small town in the midwest here, so it is pretty safe.</p>
<p>3) The campus is not large. You can walk from the Con to the farthest dorm in under 15 minutes. You can walk to the nearer dorms in under 5 minutes. Many of the dorms also have a piano in a lounge area.</p>
<p>4) Reasonable - about what you would expect from a standard practice room. You can hear a little from the hallway, but not much at all when you are inside your own room.</p>
<p>5) Temperature and ventilation were OK when I used them, at least good enough that I did not really notice that the room was too hot, too cold or too stuffy.</p>
<p>6) They all have windows. They come in different sizes. I imagine they could get smelly if the prior occupant left something gross in there, but did not notice any problems of that sort. Some were slightly untidy, most were fine.</p>
<p>7) Oberlin has the largest single collection of Steinway pianos under one roof. There are over 200 on campus and they have a couple of full time technicians whose job it is to keep them in shape. If you happen to find one that needs work, report it and use a different room.</p>
<p>8) There were seats in most, but I did not try them.</p>
<p>9) The lockers for the smaller instruments are just down the corridor. If you have a large instrument like a harp or double bass, you get assigned a semi-private practice room in which you keep your instrument. That room is shared with one or two others and only the people assigned that room have the keys for it. If one of the others is using the room, you can always take your instrument to another available non-private practice room nearby.</p>
<p>10) No, the acoustics are what you would expect from a small space. If you need good acoustics, there are several performing spaces that you may be able to reserve some time in. There are also a number of spaces that are not really designed for practice or performance, but have nice acoustics if your instrument is portable.</p>
<p>When were visiting schools for intro lessons and auditions, I was most impressed by the practice rooms at the Shepard School at Rice. Beautiful building, roomy practice rooms with windows, lovely self contained campus.</p>
<p>CIM- Getting a practice room can be tough at certain times (sorry, stradmom) because they are shared with the kids who are part of the young artist program there (HS students). But there are no non-music majors or those minoring in music at CIM, so that’s not a problem. The rooms below ground, so no view but they’re clean, comfortable and acoustics are good.The pianos are dealt with regularly and if something is wrong, report it and one of the 3 techs will get to it. Each student is assigned a locker and the conservatory is about 20 steps from the dorm, so that’s convenient. Harpists have two dedicated studios and can throw anyone else out of those, and there are a few rooms that the double bass players can fit comfortably into.</p>
<p>Thought everyone might enjoy reading this Juilliard blog post on the top ten practice rooms there:<a href=“https://shawn-kelly-tf58.squarespace.com/music/2014/11/3/top-10-practices-spaces”>https://shawn-kelly-tf58.squarespace.com/music/2014/11/3/top-10-practices-spaces</a></p>
<p>I’m wondering if they ever finished the new music bldg at NWU? They were talking about it when my S auditioned there 4 years ago.
UM has awful practice rooms, very small, not very well sound insulated and in the basement so somewhat dungeon-like. I think they are building a new music building so hopefully they will have some nice new practice rooms when that is done.
The nicest practice rooms I saw were at Central Michigan U when my son did a competition there, big with huge windows, very well sound insulated. Also, some of the practice rooms at IU were nice, they were in a small bldg. across the street, not the main music bldg.</p>
<p>Jacobs (Indiana) has tons of practice rooms in two buildings. Keep in mind that they also have tons of students. DS says he has never had a problem getting a practice room. The one building is circular with about 4 floors. Teaching studios on the first floor and practice rooms on the others. The rooms are massive compared to what I have seen at other schools and each has a piano. They are not pretty but the acoustics are great and you can’t hear your neighbors at all. Lockers (all different sizes to accommodate different instruments) are available in the building and are available for rental for the semester. The building is located with all of the other music buildings and many of the dorms are close by (some right across the street).</p>
<p>We have a great blog post from one of our current students discussing the Top 10 Practice Spaces on our campus. You can also see pictures from inside our practice rooms in other posts. Check it out at <a href=“http://blog.juilliard.edu/music/”>http://blog.juilliard.edu/music/</a> </p>
<p>Not CCM…too few. 
</p>
<p>CIM has additional practice rooms in a building about 200ft from the main building. Some kids like the more relaxed atmosphere it provides. </p>
<p>My son worked at Harvard this summer, and he said their practice rooms were stunning. The pianos were fabulous and in tune. The rooms were big and bright, and he said that they had some kind of gizmo in them where you could change the acoustics to mimic different sized environments. He goes to Hartt and says the rooms there are small, but the ones a Berklee are smaller. </p>