Building a trumpet studio

[thesplitmeister]

Hello fellow THers,
I’m looking into building a practice studio in my garden since moving house in November. Don’t have the largest garden but I think I should have space to make it work. Has anyone else done this, could you let me know what you learned while doing it and any pitfalls to avoid? Also, what do you think the smallest size would be you could get away with while still being able to practice thoroughly (ie not having to shy away from practicing loud).
Many thanks!
Jim

[mdarnton]

I practice in my basement bathroom. It's about six feet square with a corner missing from the shower stall. I've hung some blankets and towels, and a couple of rugs on the floor to keep the resonance down (the bathroom isn't used, except for guests) and it's sufficient for me. All the loose fabric made a big difference. I do like the option of facing a tile wall when I'm working on tone quality, too. :-)

The main thing I'm lacking in that room and in my house, too, is an efficient space to store music, and if I were building something, I'd think a lot about that, someplace where music could be separated by category, yet still stored flat, since it doesn't stand up on edge well. Like a bank of shallow drawers, for instance. And a deeper drawer for mutes, and one for cleaning stuff, since we're building drawers.

In 40 years of violin making, I've worked in 10 different shop locations, and there's an exercise I always do before setting up that you might consider. I stand in the empty space for 30 minutes or so and imagine myself working. The light, the wall I'm going to stare at, where the door is (in my case, NEVER behind my back!), where I want all my tools and storage to make them convenient, what I'm going to have to step around, and lay the whole thing out in my mind, then imagine working there to see if any problem pops up.