New at Bally Studios: New staff members, digital piano, badge making, wifi upgrade, Fender cab, etc.

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BALLY STUDIOS, N17.

REHEARSAL STUDIOS & 8 TRACK RECORDING.
TOTTENHAM HALE, LONDON.

6 minutes walk from Tottenham Hale station. (Victoria Line and Stansted Express.)
Free Parking on site.

Newsletter #4 - June 2025

35+ years, 45,000+ sessions, 2,500 bands, and still independently run by musicians, for musicians.

Like many businesses within the music industry, over the last 5 years Bally Studios has been through some....... challenges, shall we say! From needing to close our doors in March 2020, and not being able to book any sessions for more than 11 months, to being impacted by the double whammy of bands being affected by both the rise in the cost of living, as well as the closure of many live music venues in London. When bands play less gigs, they need to rehearse less. 🙁 There's no doubt that we faced some unbelievable challenges in 2020-2024. 😥

That is why we are so proud that Jan - May 2025 has been our busiest ever start to a year! We are now averaging 550-600 hours of bookings per month across our 5 studios, and bands now need to book up more than 8 weeks in advance to secure their prefered slot! 😃 From having months on end of the rooms sitting empty, it's so great again to have band members packing up their pedals whilst another band walks into the studios with guitar cases in hand, and drummers taking their cymbals off of our stands, while the next band's drummer is ready to put theirs on it! Bands are chatting to each other, flyers for gigs are being swapped, and musicians are making great music again. 💗

After all of the recent hard years, to our customers we say - THANK YOU for sticking with us, and keeping the studios thriving! It's been an unbelievable joy to have you all coming to us, and we look forward to many more years of it!

Brand new stage piano now available at Bally!

We're always looking for ways to improve the facilities that we have on offer at Bally, and most of the time we allow that process to be guided by the bands that come to us. By seeking constant feedback from those bands, we know what aspects of the studios need improving, and what services need to be introduced.

Recently, at the end of 2024, we suddenly had quite a few bands enquire as to whether we had a stage piano available. Lliterally within a couple of weeks we had 3-4 bands all asking us the exact same question, after not being asked that same question for years beforehand. We took that as a sign, and we invested in a brand new stage piano, complete with high quality stool and keyboard stand, with it having 88 weighted keys with hammer action keyboard, and all of the other features you'd expect on a decent stage piano.

We're very proud to say that the feedback that we've had so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and it's been a great help to many of the bands that have come to us. If you need a stage piano for your session, please let us know in advance so that we can make sure it's available for your next session, for no extra charge at all.

Farewell to staff member Jacob. 😢

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The bands who have been coming to Bally over the years will have recently noticed that our staff member Jacob is no longer working his usual shifts. After more than 460 shifts over nearly 4 years, Jacob has moved onto a new job now, but he'll still be rehearsing at Bally with his band, and we'll always be super grateful for all of the work that he put into the studios over the years, having joined us in 2021 when we were just getting back on our feet after the COVID shutdown.

Jacob, it was an absolute pleasure having you working with us over the years, wishing you all the best for the future, and looking forward to seeing you at future rehearsals! Here's Jacob on drums in one of his bands, Sol Paradise.

Welcome to new staff member, Ale! 😃

Due to the huge increase in the amount of band sessions that we've had at the studios over the last 18 months, we decided to get 2 staff members to replace Jacob!

Here's the first staff member, Ale!! (Short for Alessandro. 🎸)

Born in Verona, Italy, Alessandro started his musical journey by founding the grunge band Emycrania in 1998 as lead guitarist and singer. He attended a BTEC Extended Diploma in Music at Aloud Verona and later relocated to London in 2010, where he established himself as both a solo artist and session musician. Under the alias Ben Ales, he released one album (2017) and several singles as a songwriter, the latest being "Lazy Sun Day" (2024).

Ale also plays bass in the genre-fluid indie band Lemon Power, contributing as co-writer and co-producer on their releases. They have been regularly playing shows within the London indie circuit for the last 3 years and recently recorded their new single "I’m an Animal".

Ale plays guitar, bass, percussion and sings. He has been collaborating with various artists and producers while maintaining an active presence in London's music scene, including a few jazzy lofi hip hop jam sessions with Doctor Gosso and Friends at the Ninety One Living Room, with another release "FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)"

New badge making facilities at Bally!

Since 2005 we've always given Bally Studios badges away for free to all of the bands that come to rehearse with us, and loads of the bands that come to us get badges pressed up to give away at gigs, so we decided to invest in all of the equipment needed to make short run badges ourselves! The whole process of learning how everything works has been really fun, the feedback that we've had from the bands is that the badges that we make, which our staff members press by hand, are even better than the "professional" companies that we've used in the past!

Our prices are as follows, just email us the artwork and you can collect them at your next session!

25mm badges = £7 for 28, or 25p each thereafter.
32mm badges = £5 for 15 or 33p each thereafter.
58mm badges = £3 for 6, 50p each thereafter.

58mm bottle openers, with magnets on them
= £6 for £6, £1 each thereafter.

Over several weeks we have been experimenting with different colours, badge sizes, logo sizes, photo paper, different printer settings and badge materials, and here are some of the ones that we made along the way to getting the whole process perfected.

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We've also made some new Bally Studios pride badges, to celebrate pride month! Like all of the Bally badges, they're free for all of the bands that come to us.

🧡💛💚💙💜

New 4x10 Fender Bass Cab.

We were super grateful to be contacted by one of our customers offering us a Fender 4x10 bass cabinet that was taking up too much room in their home, and after sending it off for a full test and service, it's been put through it's paces by LOADS of bands, many of whom have paired it with our 1x15 bass cab, for a 1x15 & 4x10 combination, which perfectly balances the definition and punch provided by the smaller 10 inch speakers, along with the power and warmth provided by the 15 inch bass speaker.

Bring your own head, or use one of the many bass heads that we have on offer, for no extra charge!

Brand new cymbals for bands to use, for free!

The bands that have used us over the last 20 years will know that we've always resisted the temptation to charge extra for backline equipment, and in the past the area where this was the hardest to balance was in the cymbals that we provide to the bands. Pay too much for them and the price of the session gets inflated, but if you scrimp too much then you risk getting cymbals that last only a few weeks before they are unusable.

However, over the last few years we've been offering these B20 cymbals, available in a full set of 14 inch hi-hats, 16 inch crash and 20 inch ride. They're made of 80% copper and 20% tin, a combination that has been used longer than any other alloy, including for almost 400 years by Zildjian alone!

The bands that use them have given really great feedback to us, and we're proud to offer them to the bands that come to us, for NO EXTRA CHARGE to the session fee.

New Bally Blog - Here's why bands should focus on progress, not perfection.

When you've had more than 2,500 bands pass through our doors over the last 20 years, you start to notice the factors that all of the successful bands share, as well as the factors that bands that remain disappointed at their progress also have in common. We have looked at these factors in detail in our new blog post.

No band was ever held back because they only had one microphone recording each guitar, but thousands of bands have been held back because nobody heard their music. That should be your band's number #1 focus - to get your music heard, even if it's in an imperfect recording.

Read

New fast braodband installed at the studios!!

In February 2025, after many years of badgering Openreach to finally install the fibre optic cables that we needed to get superfast broadband at the studios, the process has finally been completed! We're now getting speeds of 90MB-150MB+ a second, which makes the process of uploading the stem tracks and video footage of recording sessions to communal online storage websites a breeze! We've also installed a Wifi extender in the back corridor, meaning that bands in all studios can access the fast internet that we now have.

If you want to upload a HUGE video file, or perform a live stream of your rehearsal, we now have the facilities!

New Air purifiers installed in Studios.

We've also been trailing these nifty little air purifiers in our studios as well, to see if they make the studios a nicer place to rehearse. So far the feedback that we've been getting is that.... yes, they do! 😃

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