With the new music building nearing completion this fall, Ball State University will be one of the few universities in the nation with this kind of state-of-the-art music building.
Six hundred music majors will begin the academic year in this new $22 million building that includes 26 practice rooms, eight offices, 19 studios, four libraries and a performance hall that seats an audience of 600.
"The building is basically two buildings next to each other isolated for sound," Tom Frisbie-Fulton, director of facilities planning, said. "On one side is the performance hall and the other side is for academic use and practice rooms."
All offices and most of the rooms in the building are acoustically isolated with synthetic floors so students can do low-level recording, Frisbie-Fulton said.
Leonard Atherton was director of orchestras at Ball State for 21 years and said he complained frequently and bitterly about the facility situation.
"I worked for 21 years in one of the worst places ever conceived," Atherton said. "It's hoped that this new building will be a facility where conditions are right for students to play at their best."
If they play at their best, thier performance will mirror the technology of the building.
"I would match the quality of the building, without exaggeration, with the finest in the world," Frisbie Fulton said. "We have the finest music building in the midwest."
"It's so beautiful," Gora said. "It's another distinctive program at Ball State. Our students are very attractive to the music industry. It's another jewel in our crown."
Music engineering majors are now being asked to minor in physics because of the extent of technology that comes along with the major, Gora said.
The students will also be able to utilize seven new Steinway pianos, as opposed to the Yamahas in the old building.
"The quality of the pianos certainly matches the quality of the building," Frisbie-Fulton said.
The band practice room has floor-to-ceiling windows and is wired for recording. If it's a nice day, the band even has access to a courtyard behind the room where they can go out and play.
The choral practice room doubles as a recital room and is complete with what Frisbie-Fulton calls "variable acoustics" in the walls. The performers can alter reverberaions, or the echo of the voices, in the room up to a second.
The performance hall on the other side of the building has a shoebox design that has been used for centuries in performance halls in Germany and Austria, Frisbie-Fulton said.
"There is no bad seat in the house," said Frisbie-Fulton. "The area is perfect for viewing and listening, and the stage is large enough to for a full orchestra and chorus."
With the layered design, the balcony seats and windows in the back, the hall will also be used as a classroom, Frisbie-Fulton said.
"I would expect there would be immediate benefit in terms of players being able to hear themselves in real time and real balance," Atherton said.
Atherton compared the music building to a basketball arena.
In the old building, it would be as if basketball players had to play on a rocky, uneven surface where they never knew where the ball would bounce back up; the new building is much more like Worthen Arena for the music students, Atherton said.
"The performers have a facility now where they can flourish," Atherton said.
Plans are in the works for a pipe organ to be installed in the performance hall. The organ would have 65 ranks of pipes and will be installed in 2006, Frisbie-Fulton said.
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