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The bassist and guitarist in my current band just moved into a new house. We don't have our own practice space at the moment so we were hoping we'd be able to use their basement. Having checked it out properly it definitely isn't big enough, however, they have a spare 'bedroom' (it's downstairs at the front of the house, so a weird place for a bedroom) which we're considering using. The house has neighbours on both sides, but one side is an off-licence and on the other side there are three consecutive student houses who've been having loads of house parties, so we don't think noise complaints will be an issue. Even still, we'd like to do some vague soundproofing so that we don't piss people off too much.

Initially the guys were looking for a third housemate, but what we're probably gonna do is just split that share of the rent between the four band members, which only works out about the same as what we're currently paying for a weekly practice. Plus, hopefully this means we can practice more than once a week!

The plan is to get some shitty old mattresses and put them up against the walls, and then have as many rugs/blankets as possible on the floor. Any other worthwhile suggestions? I've read stuff online about like 'building an internal room within the room' and stuff. We don't really have the time/skills/budget to do anything like that. Cheap, simple suggestions please!

I don't think any of this stuff actually works, though.

I'd just practise during the day and either get pally enough with your neighbours or comfortable enough telling them to fuck themselves that it isn't an issue.

Paul's right most of that isn't worth the effort & maybe rehearse while others are out. Sound proofing & diffusion only works so much but not enough for residential streets.

Mike once posted about a set up his band had for rehearsal but it did involve electronic drums

At the end of the day it's not even my neighbour's, so as long as Lewis and Cam (who's house it is) are okay with it then it's not really my concern. Even still, it'd be good to dampen things a bit.

I suppose 'dampen' is probably the right word moreso than 'soundproof', as I'm aware that you can't properly soundproof a room without spending some money. Surely mattresses, blankets etc... must have some dampening effect even if they don't make the room soundproof?

We'll probably also dampen the drum kit somewhat so that we can have everything else at a slightly lower volume.

It'll have some effect I'd imagine but whether or not it'll be enough to be appreciable by the neighbours I wouldn't be so sure.

Fair enough, haha. Cheers for the advice anyway.

I suppose one benefit of doing it is that at least if the neighbours come round to complain we can show them that we've made the effort, even if it hasn't had much of an effect, haha.

Id work more on keeping their house party noise out than keeping yours in, although the process is the same.

Yeah, the effort idea is probably your best bet. Carpet hung over windows and whatnot can help some. A lot of time it just sucks out the high frequencies; so not great for recording but can dampen things somewhat and help with feedback through vocal mics.

Is there a basement or is it the ground below? If it's just the ground, you probably don't need more than one carpet (or however many to cover the whole floor) on the floor and you can put some carpets on the walls.

There is a basement, yeah. Annoyingly though, it isn't big enough for us to rehearse down there.