Aquakultre opens rehearsal and recording space in Halifax where musicians can jam 24/7

A new rehearsal and recording space for musicians who need a place to jam early in the morning or late at night has opened off Herring Cove Road in Halifax, N.S. 

It's a shared space for people who can't afford a costly recording studio, or don't want to keep their neighbours up, said Lance Sampson Aquakultre.

The musician and his partner spruced up the space and brought in some musical gear, including a mixing board, keyboard and drum kits. People are welcome to use what they have or bring their own, Sampson said.

There's even a little drum set for his daughter. 

"She got a purple little drum kit set up here because she wants to learn drums. We just kind of looked at each other and were like, yeah, I don't want to leave. I think one night we might spend the night here. Who knows," he told CBC Radio's Information Morning Nova Scotia during a recent tour of the space.

Sampson's conversation with host Portia Clark has been condensed and edited for clarity.

You can listen to the full interview here:

You could just jam all night. That's what it's all about.

That was the idea. Like we needed to find a spot where you were able to jam 24/7. There's not a lot of spaces in Halifax you're able to do that. We just need more spaces like that — 24/7 access, 24/7 being able to jam because I just find a lot of creativity comes either really early in the morning or super late at night. I'm glad that this exists and the owner has allowed us to be able to come in here and jam late at night.

Tell us a bit more about the need for spaces like this and why the downtown isn't necessarily affordable to set something up?

It'd be nice if it was more in the core of Halifax or Dartmouth, that was our initial thought. But things are too expensive and most of the laws are you got to stop making noise at 11:00 p.m. mainly. I understand people got to work, people got to go to school. So just to have it out of the way where you don't have to worry about that, it's a bonus. 

Plus, spending the time to come out to a space that's more out of the way gives you more of like, OK, I came out here for a reason. Rather than you're just chilling around and you kind of can waste time doing that. I want this to kind of ripple effect more interest in creating more spaces where we're all collectively just sharing it.

How much is this costing compared to somewhere downtown?

Well, Downtown Dartmouth, I was told that it could be $6,000 a month at a certain spot, but that's very central. But most of the spots were like $1,500 a month, $2,000 a month. But compared to that, this is like a fraction — this is $550 a month plus tax.

You did some fundraising so you could get this going. Who pitched in and how did you get this ball rolling? 

The Aquakultre family is very big. It's like 10-15 members. Collectively, we could all kind of do it together. But I was like why don't we just do that, but also allow people to use it whenever they want. So in order for us to just get it rolling ... [I said] let's establish it first, get everything that we need and see how the community feels about it. I just thought, 'Hey, maybe a GoFundMe could work' and we reached our goal, which is pretty awesome. It allowed us to put two months down on the rent, allowed us to get the acoustic panels in here, allowed us to get the mixer.

So musicians can come in and use any of the gear, bring their own gear, that type of thing?

Yeah, it's resource sharing. Like grab what you need, use what you can. If you're coming into the space, just bring whatever you have. If you want to leave it here, then you're basically allowing other folks to use it as well and just share each others' resources.

I mean not everyone can afford all of this stuff, right? 

Exactly. I just want people to be able to come in and use it when they can.

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