On any given day, The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music is a hive of activity, with dozens of classes taking place, lessons being taught in faculty offices and performances happening in the school’s theaters. But the busiest spaces by far? Practice rooms. Open seven days a week—7am to midnight on weekdays and 8am to 11pm on weekends—the practice rooms are in constant use by students from every department. In an average year, they will host over 180,000 practice sessions.
In Fall 2024, forty-nine practice rooms at UCLA re-opened after their first comprehensive renovation since their construction in 1955. Rechristened Imagination Hall, each room has been upgraded with advanced acoustics, LED lighting, data ports for wired connections, and aesthetic enhancements. Construction for this ambitious renovation began in the summer of 2022 thanks to a generous $5 million gift from the Herb Alpert Foundation, transforming the school’s essential practice spaces into state-of-the-art environments for student musicians.
“People tend to think of magic as happening inside the concert hall,” said Herb Alpert, legendary musician and music executive who created the school of music with a visionary $30 million gift from the Herb Alpert Foundation. “Well, that magic comes from thousands of hours in the practice rooms. This is where musicians tap into their imagination and experiment with new musical ideas.”
UCLA Facilities spearheaded the renovation, navigating a tight timeline to deliver the project on schedule. Working closely with Walters-Storyk Design Group (WSDG), a 13-time TEC award-winning global architectural acoustic consulting, design, and A/V integration engineering firm, UCLA Facilities managed the skilled technicians and workers crucial to making the project a success.
WSDG designed the acoustics implemented in the renovated practice rooms. Having designed media facilities worldwide, WSDG applied the same expertise used in renovations for the school’s 130-seat auditorium, Lani Hall, as well as for the rehearsal spaces for band, orchestra, and choir. According to Joshua Morris, partner and chief operating officer at WSDG, the acoustics of the large spaces came with significant challenges, but renovating nearly fifty individual different rooms brought a unique complexity.
“There are two separate wings of practice rooms in the Schoenberg Music Building,” said Morris, who first arrived in the summer of 2021 to survey the project. “It was obvious from the beginning that the two wings were from different eras. Each wing presented its own set of acoustic challenges.”
In the south wing, most practice rooms sported acoustic ceiling tiles (ACT) and were rectangular, although with a slightly angled interior wall. This angled wall is an important acoustical feature because a purely rectangular room can create what’s known as a flutter echo and “comb filter effect,” where sound waves reflect off untreated parallel walls, repeatedly bouncing back and forth. When these reflections overlap within a short interval, they can interfere with each other, either amplifying or canceling certain frequencies. This generates an imbalanced acoustic environment which is not optimal for instrument practice.
The majority of the practice rooms were in the north wing, and many of them were built without the angled interior wall that helps reduce the comb filter effect. They also had glue-on ceiling tiles, not suspended ACT ceilings, and insufficient or damaged acoustic panels.
“The practice rooms were serviceable, but showing their age,” said Morris. “You could literally see the wear, especially where it was clear that rooms that needed acoustic panels were missing them. And our tests showed that sound absorption was not ideal, especially for lower frequencies.”
Acoustical treatments had to vary based on the typology of the room, both because the rooms presented many individual characteristics and because their purpose sometimes differed. Rooms designed for percussion, for instance, required more attention to sound absorption at lower frequencies. New acoustic paneling was carefully calibrated to the needs of the rooms they served.
“The sound is dryer in the new practice rooms,” said Michelle Yang, a French horn performance major. “It’s a good thing for my practice technique. The dryness helps me hear when my articulation is not crisp enough. It makes me a better player.”
A modular acoustic approach went hand in hand with a unified aesthetic. The project specified the use of elegant wooden paneling that matched the acoustic treatments in the recently renovated Lani Hall to bring a sense of consistency and unity. The renovations also integrated new, LED lighting into the ceiling treatments, both for aesthetics and modern energy efficiency.
“These are the spaces where students pursue their musical passions,” said Eileen Strempel, inaugural dean of The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. “This is where musicians refine their techniques and hone their craft. It is extremely important to have warm and welcoming spaces for our students where they can nurture their artistic imaginations. It’s a testament to the generosity of Herb Alpert and his wife Lani Hall that they want their philanthropy to benefit the students directly.”
“I’m so grateful,” said Yang, who is currently preparing for auditions for graduate school. “The renovated practice rooms are truly beautiful, and it is a joy to practice in them.”