Where do you practice?

Do you usually practice in the same place? Probably most of us do, but recently I decided to try out different locations in my house to see if it made any difference - the reason being that I thought where I currently practice (my study - lots of books & wooden furniture) had a particularly 'dead' sound! I was lead to this experiment by reading a blog of a bassoonist in the USA - here is an extract from that blog which I think you may well find interesting . . .

I think that the ideal practice room is neither too live nor too dead. Recently I came to the conclusion that I've been practicing in too dead a room. (I was going through some old recordings, and came across one of a mystery bassoonist from several years ago. It sounded impressive, and I thought that I'd really like to sound like that. Then I noticed that the recording was labeled and dated. It turns out that I was the mystery bassoonist, shockingly. I was playing in the house I used to live in, which had wood floors and high ceilings, and far superior acoustics to where I live now.) I often record my practicing, and the dead acoustics I have now are not flattering at all! In my current house, only my bedroom has hardwood floors, so now I'm practicing there. It is a small room with a low ceiling, though, and the bed absorbs a lot of the sound. The room adds a ring to the sound which I'm still getting used to. When I was a student at Eastman, I used to practice in all types of practice rooms- sometimes in really dead rooms, sometimes in more live ones, and when I really wanted to sound my best, like right before the concerto competition, I practiced in the very echo-y stairwell (late at night, when almost everyone had left). I remember speculating with fellow students that if we could manage to sound good in a dead room, then we could certainly sound good anywhere! That may be true, but I think we benefit from hearing ourselves in a variety of spaces so that we are never shocked by sounding different in an unfamiliar acoustical environment. And there's no doubt that good acoustics are inspiring.

. . . . l've now find that the best sound in my house for me is in the hallway - tiled floors and very high ceilings, it sounds wonderful and has actually extended my practice times because I sound so much better!