During the current Covid-19 restrictions we are still open and accepting repairs for acoustic and electric guitars, bass guitars, back line amplifiers, power amplifiers, speakers, lighting, effects machines etc.

See our repairs page for full details.

It is so important that children still have the opportunity to play musical instruments during this time. Music teaches so much more than how to make music! It teaches them to be part of a team, it improves mental health, co-ordination, patience, and even improves reading, memory and grades in other subjects! But recorder groups and woodwind orchestras and choirs are a thing of the past at the moment as controlling the transmission of the virus of course, takes precedence. But this doesn’t mean we should let music stop in schools. There is therefore a movement towards ukuleles in schools. They are simple, fairly cheap and it is easy to create a group or class of children playing simple tunes to allow them to enjoy being part of creating music as a group. Most music teachers, even if they aren’t uke players themselves can pick it up very quickly to play a few chords to be able to teach them.

We have researched the market, boy is there some rubbish out there! You can pick up a uke for about the cost of a cup of coffee (I’ll save you the shock, they are totally unplayable – you’d be better off with the coffee!) You can also spend a fortune. We think we have found the right instruments at the right price point for schools. These happy, colourful little ukes are decent quality for a starter instrument and are priced very competitively. You will find you’re getting a great discount if you buy a box of 24 for your school, from us. Please get in touch if we can order you a box, they are going to be in high demand and the discount really wont last long. 01572822535

Well, it’s fair to say that things have just been getting bigger and better recently at Rocky Road Music, this festival season has been a flurry of large events, weddings in stately homes with drag queens and fire eating and waitresses on stilts…up and down the country we’ve travelled, doing sound events for sports teams with the odd celebrity name thrown in for good measure, festivals in muddy and sunny fields, working with some fantastic live bands. We’ve done theatre shows, high end fashion shows, sports days, charity gigs and good old fashioned disco’s and even a little school fete. Our hire gear is working harder than ever and a week never goes by without our gear adding some volume and atmosphere to someones event, somewhere.

We are really excited and proud to have invested heavily this year in a new, bigger, better sound system for large events, our new line array system will knock your socks off and we love it nearly as much as our understanding wives. We are also on our second year of being able to provide an immense lighting show (as well as the normal smaller rigs for pub gigs and parties).

We have a fantastically hard working team that now means we can cover many events at once. It’s a great time for Rocky Road Music and we thank our customers for coming back to us over and over again. Here’s to the rest of the summer!

It’s been a great year for us all at Rocky Road Music with the workshop flat out repairing instruments and amps for our customers, plus many new installation jobs…… and that’s before any gigs!

 

Don’t forget we’re still here for your musical christmas gifts, so don’t forget to check out our online shop.

 

Anyway, we just wanted to wish all our customers a very Happy Christmas and we look forward to seeing you in 2017.

 

 

 

 

Rocky Road Music has added a new Proel Axiom Line Array PA system to our extensive hire stock.  This system is ideal for outdoor festivals (upto 3000 people) or is equally happy in theatres and larger halls for touring bands.

Check out our Facebook page for a video if you want to see & hear

Call for a quote for your next event. 01572822535

June & July mark the start of summer, and when the sun’s out, we all like to go to a festival….. or get married!

Either way, Rocky Road Music can help.

We provide PA hire for music festivals, anything upto 5000 people in a field.  All you need is a stage and a generator, and we’ll do the rest. Have a look at the ‘Equipment Hire’ tab or contact us for full details.

Everyone loves a good wedding, and again we have everything you need from a DIY sound and lighting system through to a full LIVE band & DJ plus marquee lighting to really set the mood.  Check out the ‘services’ tab for details.

Have a good summer.  🙂

Merry Christmas to all our customers! (and Ria has a rant about shopping local)

As Christmas approaches, we miss the bustling excitement of our retail shop, the regulars popping in with cards and muffins, the parents buying for their kids and the people paying a tenner a week to buy their husband a new guitar. We think about how hard we worked to give a better service than amazon, or Asda (not hard) and think about how much we invested in customers being happy with their purchases.

Our retail shop is gone now, while we personally are doing much better running the hire, repair and sales from home, at this time of year, you can’t help but miss the human interaction and the pleasure from giving people what they need and of working hard on your feet all day.

So, a little plea…If you still have presents to buy for Christmas, please think about who you spend your money with. Who are you feeding? What are you feeding? Because, we are all voting with pound notes on what sort of world you want to be a part of and want in the future. (cheesy but true)

We go into a shop and see something we like, but we are savvy, we can probably get it cheaper online. We can probably get it from Amazon, (who don’t pay the UK tax they should, or value their staff) we can probably get it from a box shifter abroad who doesn’t understand what they’re selling so can’t advise you on it. But IS it cheaper? Really? Or are we forgetting about VALUE.  When you buy from a local business, you are supporting an industry who needs and appreciates you. Your money takes the form of small salaries and shop fronts, it pays for someone to be at the end of the phone if you have a problem. It often pays for better quality. Valuing those things in my opinion, is savvy. We are lucky enough to live somewhere with a butchers, a bakers and little shops, when you shop with them you say that’s how you want your town to look. When you shop with the big supermarkets, and big boys of the online type, you are saying that’s how you want the world to look… Warehouses, box shifting, personality devoid experiences. 

 

We can’t any longer offer you the experience of walking in to a shop and trying our stuff out, we can’t offer you a coffee and a way of paying slowly so that it works for you. But there are some people out there who haven’t yet been squashed by Asda selling their products at half the price and quality, or amazon sellers selling things for less than trade. Support them. There is nothing better for a small shop owner than a good Christmas, one that sets them up for the quiet period in spring, allows them to not fear the bills coming in and allows them to expand, be better and dream bigger. 

We wish you all a merry, savvy, buying period and thank whole heartedly those people who always ‘got it’ and helped us hang around for a lot longer than most music shop owners in the area and country did when the recession hit. We appreciated it hugely. We also appreciate those who still remember us for the things we can still provide, for calling us for PA and instrument repairs and hire, keeping Dan busy with the sound or DJ gigs and we’re loving that so many are still calling us for PA design and installation. We’ll continue to always do our best to provide you good value for your money and a service you can rely on.

Merry Christmas.

Yep, with the summer in full flow and festivals going on all over the place, we’ve been busy repairing everything from a guitar string to blown up speakers.

Our PA crew have been all over the area with festivals, touring bands and even an orchestra.

Our team of DJ’s are entertaining the crowds at wedding receptions in castles, marquees and plenty of hotels.

One thing I love about this business is that one week I can be doing a kids party and the next thing I know, Rocky Road Music is off to do the sound on Trafalgar Square! This Saturday,   The 8th Feb 2014 we will be running the PA and Lighting for a charity single launch rally.   It is an honour to be working with Together in Harmony  –  a group of unsigned artists who have come together to record a single to raise money for Lee Rigbys’ family and those who lose family in service. They are aiming to break the world record for music downloads. Support them by downloading their track at 2.50pm on Saturday. If you are in or around London come and enjoy a day of music for a good cause!

pre order here