These things are starting to make me claustrophobic. The tiny rooms and poor ventilation are starting to make me a bit crazy. I think I'll go step out for some fresh air now...

I personally think it's a wonder more college music students do not have hearing loss from those places. Tiny, very "live" spaces where very loud music is played for hours and hours on end every day!!

any serious conservatory-student has to cope with that, small rooms, bad instruments, little practice-time, but, hey, we all came out alive and kicking!

Indeed. I do my best to try and find an empty classroom in order to practice, but I'm not always afforded that luxury.

that's the problem all have to cope with, life at institutions is not Paradise, life after neither, it'll come, in the end, hopefully...cheers.

The hearing loss shows up 40 years later !!

That's a very profound statement !!

what comes, at the end?

first: Purgatory, than: either Hell, or Paradise, this for the believers of many a religion, if not a believer: Memory by the ones left behind, a precious thought, and for the Nihilists: back to the elements, not mentioning worms and other inconveniances..I'm hovering between 2 of the options.

The odd thing is that a lot of college students actually put the LID UP in those tiny little rooms. I find that absolutely bizarre.

Yes - and if given any choice in the matter I'd certainly pass on Hell and the worms.

There's one practice room (that's always occupied, even at 8 AM) that has a Yamaha C3 in it. There are specific instructions to leave the lid down, but even that wasn't the case, I don't think I would put the lid up.

Oberlin was great. The rooms in the "outer ring" were nice and big and had grand pianos in them, and there were tons of them. If they were all full, that's when you had to go into the "inner ring" and endure the tiny spaces and sketchy uprights.

Ahhh I agree! Fortunately at my school, the practice rooms all have windows, so they aren't so claustrophobic. Further, the music teachers club decorated all the practice rooms in unique colors and styles. I love going in there to practice until I sit down to play the pianos...

But anyway, also fortunately, my piano teacher gave me a key to her office, which has a nice yamaha grand and a beautiful steinway grand, and I can practice in there anytime. I don't understand why the music faculty trusts me so much, but I am really happy that they do.

About hearing loss, my university is doing a big study on hearing problems now, and part of it is related to practice rooms.

The good piano rooms here are locked and only piano majors have the keys, and the pianos are taken care of fairly well... They are mostly Steinways. Can't complain, really.

Actually, I'm surprisingly pleased at the quality of the pianos. They are mostly fairly new Yamaha U1s, with Yamaha C3s used in the classrooms. There is a scattering of Steinway upright and grands in some classes as well . I think it's the lack of proper ventilation that started to get to me.

My undergraduate college invested in something like thirty new Steinways the year AFTER I graduated. They definitely needed them, but I was mad as hell that it didn't happen three years earlier!

God, I know. It's been days since I played on a grand for more than hour. More often than not, I'm stuck in a tiny box, with no window (except one on the door, so it kind of makes you feel like you're in a zoo) and a sh***y upright with a squeaking pedal.. So inspiring..

Oh and from that you go to a 9-foot beaten up Steinway to play a recital.. makes me wonder if our admin isn't even a bit embarrassed..

This reminds me, I need to find out if my Uni has any kind of practice rooms, even though I am not doing a music degree. It's stil Freshers weeks though, so the fair may have some useful info.

Well - you certainly deserve better than that !! Too bad your school can't (or won't) buy a new instrument for the recital hall or, at a minimum, upgrade some of those practice instruments.

In my undergrad years they "scheduled" the practice rooms - even those with the hideous pianos. When your hour was up you had to vacate, and (with luck) move to another room. In grad school it was a bit better because I shared a teaching studio with a couple of other grad students (voice instructors) and I was able to practice on that piano (a relatively new studio upright) in the evenings. When I started my DMA the practice pianos at the school were beyond awful - and the practice rooms lacked air conditioning (it was summertime in a large midwestern city). At that point I decided to buy my own studio upright so I could practice at home in our apartment. Drove my wife nuts - and the neighbors weren't real thrilled with it either. What's even funnier is that my teacher at the time seemed "surprised" when I told him I bought the upright.

Odd, I've been in the practice rooms at L.A. valley City College, Long Beach State and at USC Thornton. None of them were acoustically live.

Hearing loss: Etymotic Research ER-20s are about $12. They don't cut the highs nearly as much as foam plugs which I could not wear when playing drumset. I simply could not hear the cymbals. If you're worried, use the ER-20s for scales and etudes and working up and then yank them out when you're polishing a piece.

Angelina -

You probably know this, but the practice rooms at Rice are very very nice. They even have windows !! I made a point to walk through the building a couple of years ago when I was visiting my son who was a graduate student in another department. The grands "looked" like they were in very good shape...but I could be wrong.

Really? That's very interesting (and needed, I think).

Please report back on their findings/publications?

Windows? What are those? lol

No windows, but we do have wonderful Steinway grands (most brand new)and a couple of Bostons (not the same. We have practice schedules that absolutely no one follows. Oh and supposedly the grands are serviced/tuned on Fridays.

Oh that's nice! There's one classroom that I like to use, which has an older, but well-mainted Steinway L. Big sound for a 5'10.5" piano.

Ah, actually they're not really that great.. A lot of dead sound, and if you don't stretch every 30-60 mins, you will get tendonitus haha..

I'm totally spoiled by a school that I used to be able to practice at regularly (and I still do in the summers). 152 rooms in total with grand pianos, always tuned and in good shape, beautiful concert halls with well-maintained German Steinways.

And that's how it should be!

As the Mac user said : "I don't do Windows!"

Cheers!