Practice room for rental house in Japan

#1

Dear friends

Hello and thanks for letting me join the forum. Very grateful to be able to share my situation with you and ask for advice. I was not sure where to post this but since its about getting a practice room or 防音ブース in a preexisting space, I thought it would make sense to put in the other acoustic spaces section of the website and ask for your forgiveness if this would be better suited elsewhere.

I am a shakuhachi player, improvisor, and composer who has recently moved to Chigasaki, in Japan. I live about an hour southwest from Tokyo proper by train. Our current lease states no musical instruments can be practiced here so I am trying to figure out my options vis a vis home practice as I hate going to karaoke bars to practice. We are also not allowed to modify the space we live in by even hanging paintings on the wall so we are afraid to even put pushpins on the wall for prints by our friends…

Goals
My goals would be to practice my shakuhachi at any time at home between 9am and 10pm. I really struggle with technical designs and DIY projects but am hoping to get this question answered. Would a sound booth be a realistic option for cutting down the dB so my neighbours cannot hear me?

Size of room where I want to put booth
The room I would want to put the sound booth in would be in this room (see picture below). It is 305cmx260cmx241.5cm. There is a small entry way that is roughly 77.5cm across by 91cm long. There is also a cabinet 168cm long by 81.5cm with sliding cabinet doors. According to our landlords, the walls are plasterboard covered with vinyl covering. I think the thickness of the wall (without asking the landlord) is somewhere between 14cm and 17cm.

There are two windows (see photos below). The larger window is 104.5cmx110cmx16cm. The second window is 60cmx16cmx110cm. I am not convinced the 16cm is the same width as the whole wall itself and the window frame juts out a little extra on both the interior wall and exterior of the house.

https://www.pialiving.com/c/soundproof_ ... /otegaroom
https://www.pialiving.com/img/other/ote ... risetu.pdf 
According to the website, this sound booth is made with phenolic resin, which I think might be similar to rock wool but I am not sure. It is at the top of my budget, roughly 2000 USD.

I measured the dB of my shakuhachi sound using a Kaise kg.70 placed on top of a coffee table one foot away from me (45 degree angle, lower than me). The levels I got:

dBA fast 60-108
dBA slow 60-108

dBC fast
72-111
dBC slow
72-110.5

While noodling/improvising, my levels seemed to fall between 80 and 100 dB in either mode.

We are afraid to ask too many questions of the landlord about making music, or the construction of the house itself as there is a very strict no loud sounds policy here and would be grateful for any thoughts/advice yinz might have. For the time being I have been practicing (and checked my levels) in karaoke bars in the mornings (as you do in Japan).

I really appreciate your time and consideration and looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
devon osamu tipp

#2

welcome.

is it possible to measure the amount of isolation you currently have? i.e. if you were to simply play, could anyone actually hear it? if so, how loud would it appear to be? one approach is to make a recording of you playing it, then play that on a stereo system to mimic the level and take some measurements outside the window, door, etc etc. and determine what is needed. you might find that a simple set of panels easily set up and taken down could be the answer.

also, you could possiby practice outdoors? :-)

#3

Hi Glenn - thanks for your quick response. My spouse and I did test to see how "audible" my flute (and her shinobue, a different type of transverse Japanese flute often played with taiko). She went outside to listen to me in my room (2nd floor) and I did the same to listen to her. and were frustrated at how easy we were to hear: I would compare it to volume wise to hearing one of our sounds from down the hallway in our previous apartment in Pittsburgh (where gratefully our neighbors didn't care we were musicians and maybe even enjoyed all the fluting). Japanese homes, even modern ones like ours which was built twenty years ago, have notoriously thin walls with little insulation.

I will give your suggestion a shot (play the recording and try to record the levels from outside) and report back, however we regrettably don't have a stereo system. We may just wait til its a weekday when everyone is out at work and I will play in my office again and ask my spouse to write down the levels. Would it be good to do this measuring dBA, dBC, and is fast or slow better, or should I be trying to measure something else?

Alas, sustained outdoor practice is not really an option. I am looking for minimum one hour chunks to ideally do lessons remotely or to record things at home.

Thanks so much for your help!

#4

a sustained measurement averaging levels would suffice, but it seems likely your subjective assessment does mean you need some isolation. this could be something like the "whisper room" products you shared.

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