I am not allowed to play in the Residence Hall I live in (I could while I was an undergrad, but for some reason life has gotten way more regulated as a postgrad, which is ridiculous) and have been dealing with that since last term by hiking to the college every day to practice in either the music room or the chapel. It's a pain, but what are you going to do?
So I went up there today at about 9:30pm and a choir was in the chapel, so I asked the porter for the key the music room, and he told me I wasn't allowed to play after 9. Which was news to me as I've played after 9 before, so I said, "Well, I'll just wait until the choir's out of the chapel." And the porter said, "No, can't go there, either. No music after 9." I said, "What?" and he pointed out that he didn't make the rules. Keep in mind, the chapel is a totally unattached building. Then he added, "Starting next week, there will be no music allowed after 6." I asked incredulously, "Even in the chapel?" He said, " Yup. Exam time." I snapped something about how I needed to move out of halls and stormed out of the porter's lodge.
As I was walking back along the street, some drunk teens in a car honked their horn and made some catcalls at me as they zipped past, and I was angry enough that I yelled quite loudly, "Go to h*ll you f*cking a*holes!!!!" I doubt they heard me, but the other people walking down the street certainly did.
I ended up practicing in the back seat of my car until it got too cold. Ridiculous.
That sucks, Silver Spear!
When I got told off for practicing low whistle in our paper-thin walled apartment, my playing suffered and we eventually moved out of there.
Too cold??? Haven't you got a sleeping bag? Um yeah I think you need to get the hell out of there. If I didn't feel I could play at home more or less any time I wanted it would drive me nuts. Maybe you should put together an ad for a room in a shared house with another musician or two.
The yobs calling out of cars are regrettably common on Durham's road system, especially near roundabouts as far as I can make out. Best thing is to stifle the natural reaction to jump out of one's skin, and register no response. If you find yourself in North Road, drop in at the Shakespeare Hall; there's an outside chance they might let you use a room, or put you on to some other place - just a thought.
All the best.
Or - you could start a war. Seriously - get a petition going. Music is really important - its mad that you cant find a place to practice - uni should be encouraging its students to become well rounded individuals (in a perfect world). Reminds me of the "Free Hug" fellow here in Sydney. Have you guys heard of him? He was interviewed on Oprah and all. Basically he used to go to pitt St mall in the city with a sign that said "Free Hugs" - and he'd go around hugging people - just to be nice, not creepy - just to loosen up everyone and bring a smile to peoples faces. Anyhow - he got banned and the cops were brought in. He started a petition and got 10,000 signatures now he is allowed to hug anyone he likes! Good on him I say.
You can sit back and let it happen and be unhappy - or you could go out and start a revolution, You could start a link here and I'd bet you'd get loads of signatures just that way - before you even start around your campus! PS - if neighbours complained about my music i'd tell em to bugger off!
I have paper thin wall problems too, and as i'm very much a beginner on fiddle i can see why people wouldn't want to hear me. Though i think if you play half decently i don't see why anyone should mind - though of course they do, seeing as your single, unapplified music is proably seriously interfereing with their precious tv/pop music appreiciation.
I've resorted to proactising in the bath with a mute, which i hate, when people are in. For some reason the bath room is the most sound proof room in the house. Though its also small and cramped. And i hate mutes with a venegence but what can you do *shrugs* i also practise outside in summer, when its dry. In a big field near my house, that works pretty well but not at this time of year obviously.
My family hate my whistle. (All my whistles.) So I practice in the Park near work. I've come to recognise wind direction pretty accurately. When I get back to work my colleagues ask me what the weather was like, and typically I'll say "wind south-westerly, veering westerly, moderate." If it's bucketing I stay indoors. Mostly.
The park is usually deserted, although the lady who had a stroke comes and chats with me. It's nice to chat, but I need the practice.
It's a while since I was at Uni, but don't you have a Student's Union with a Music Room? At Edinburgh there was one at each union. It wasn't ideal, because events like dances would take over the entire union. But it was an alternative.
I used to play with a whistle player years ago in London. He worked as an environmental officer - responding to complaints about noise, and one day he had to go and call on someone at home - but as they weren't in he decided to wait in his car. He had his whistle with him, so decided to do a bit of practice to while away the time. A few jigs and reels later, someone tapped on his car window, saying something along the lines of 'keep the noise down' - only not that polite!
The word "performance" only becomes combustible when combined with the word "session." As long as the two words stay separated they are perfectly safe. You can combine either of these words with any other word you like as long as those two words aren't included in the same sentence together. Just to be safe... I recommend wearing safety goggles if you use these two words in the same paragraph.
A session Is a performance, Phantom. It's playing in public, with bystanders looking on. Everyone with a command of the English language knows that! Oh, S##T! Duck!
I feel your pain.
I've had to fight for my right to practice all my life. started when i was playing the guitar. my brothers would go mental if the could hear me strumming through thier precious Home and Away. si I bought an electric and just used headphones.
it was worse with the sax. i can only play that when there is a hurling match on or everyone within a five mile radius is gone to the pub.
Now with the fiddle though, they dont seem to mind as much. Maybe they cant hear me.... but i like to tell myself that they can, I just sound great 8-P
To go back to the original question........there must presumably be someone resposible for these regulations, there must be some sort of public forum where you can bring this up and simply ask why ?
If not, start a petition.
You are in a sad situation, my heart goes out to you. Whistles are easy to mute, and there are a slew of mutes for strings, but for uilleann pipes ~ YES!, actually, but I haven't had the full experience. We have several times had the pleasure of a piper in different situations, and one, a 'ceili band', a piper who also made reeds. He described to me making plastic reeds that cut the volume down considerably, and we tossed around the advantages of that. He did a lot of experimentation. I'm not in contact with him anymore, sadly, but maybe someone here knows someone that can make you at least a practice chanter reed, then you could make a tent under layers of sheets and blankets and practice at least the chanter to your heat's content. Knowing the price for a full set of reeds, and not completely happy with the idea of hauling a full set into your 'tent', at least you'd be able to do chanter practice?
Great Highland Bagpipers use a practice chanter and I've had my hands on one only once, but it was considerably quieter than the full blown squeeze... The one I'd tried was mouth blown....
'Innocent Bystander' ~ get a bit of flexible plastic, or not, and cut it into a thin strip, just wide enough to fit in the window of your whistle. Bend it so the first bend goes over the knife edge, then gend it over the next outside rise of the fipple so the longer end lies parallel to the whistle body, so it doesn't stick out. It can actually mute it that much, depending on the material and thickness and the edge the wind breaks against to produce the sound, that you could play quietly on a public bus with less noise than someone's earphones make...
Thanks Ceolachan. I make my own Plastic whistles, so they tend to be a bit quieter than the average. But I'm coming around to examining mutes and tweaks. I'll explore that.
I was playing a few after-gig tunes (always the best bit of the evening, after the PA's turned off - it sometimes even stops the audience in their tracks) with some band-mates in a very grand establishment in Central London on Friday night, when one of the staff came over and told us we had to stop. "It's nearly 1 o'clock!" he said. "So what?" I thought. It wasn't a residential area. There were no neighbours. Once all the cleaners had gone home, there's be nobody there until the next function, or at least, the next morning. Even if there's a caretaker living there, the building is so vast and robustly built that he couldn't possibly hear anything more than a wall's thickness away. So why bother with these rules?
However, reading Silver Spear's story makes me realise how lucky I am. In fact, after another gig the following night, we managed a good three sets of unplugged tunes during clearing up time, and nobody bothered us. In fact, it was another band member's having to be up early next morning that called it to a close.
BTW Sliver. No music in the *Music Room*? Doesn't that remind you of a certain sketch about a cheese shop? In fact, if only you played the bouzouki, you could go and practise in a cheese shop (...which actually reminds me of passing through the singularly dull central-French town of Flers, which redeemed itself when I met a man practising his saz in a kebab shop).
I did occur to me that perhaps the porter didn't like you because your pipes weren't Northumbrian enough for him.
I'm sure there's a solution to the practice space problem. Just keep looking, perhaps post an ad looking for "rehearsal space", make nice with the actual music students and faculty - you might get a break from them.
I tried the muted whistle thing for a while (you can mute a whistle by placing poster putty over the fipple) and the twit who lives a couple doors down the hall from me must have complained because I was told to stop playing, muted or otherwise. I was also informed it was categorically against college regulations to play a musical instrument in the halls. Recorded music, however, is kosher so I occasionally play techno loudly on my laptop speakers (borrowed from shared itunes music of course, since I don't own any of that stuff) just to be obnoxious, but legally obnoxious so they can't do anything about it.
Presumably it disturbs people who are doing actual academic work. Whereas yelling in the halls or blasting punk rock doesn't. Sure. These regulations defy logic.
I need to work out who in the college I can kvetch to who would be sympathetic and could do something about it. A lot of people figure, well, you don't NEED to play and people NEED to study, so you're f*cked. Trick is to find someone who doesn't share that attitude.
I was going to suggest that Silver, make friends with faculty, music faculty in particular. Also, you might try the science department ~ YEAH! ~ I've known a lot of science majors and graduates who were into science, and they often have these little out of the way places. If it's chemistry, well, sometimes there are smells to contend with, but there are possibilities... Sometimes you need to work squiff of the usual expectations. There are sure to be folks there that will sympathize and may have a solution for you. If you have a media department they may have 'studios'?!
Best of luck, and let us know if you find something...
Yeah, I know about the putty but I prefer the strip of plastic, and you can make it work for arced knife edges too. It is just more portable and less messy ~ and I think it works better over all, and no oil or risk of staining plastic whistles blue... (Yeah, I know you can get white putty too...) Also, you can make one from just about anything ~ though a swiss army knife is nice to have on hand...
I once almost (she smoked like hell) dated a classical piano player who lived by a street which has heavy traffic 'round day and night. The appartment she lived in was a single fairly small room in which there was this huge expensive grand piano standing in the middle of the floor. Despite the constant awkward traffic noise the neighbours kept on complaining about her playing which was truly very good. Finally she had all the walls padded with a thick something and that finally satisfied the neighbours. Imo, they mostly seemed to be annoyed by the (classical) music, not the terrible car noise they had there all along.
Eddie Damm from Song of The Sea makes a uilleann whistle chanter. It is the same fingering and mechanics as the pipes, yet is a whistle. Mebbe you can get your hands on one of these? His site is http://www.songsea.com/uwc.htm#UILLEANNWHISTLE
If its still too loud, I'm sure that trick ceolachan mentioned will work for this.
I havn't read all the comments in the thread so I might be repeating someone, but why on earth have you gone back into halls of residence? You can get a room in a shared house for the same price as halls anywhere in the country and if your house mates are sound (as mine are) you can practise as much as you like. It's also a hell of a lot cheaper for accomidation in Durham than it is down here!
If that's not an option - screw 'em all! tell them it's essential reasearch for your studies. If you STILL can't do it, make a point to practise often and loudly outside the principals door in protest until the whole campus joins in and the b*stards crack. seriously, you should organise a campaign or something, I'm positive your not the only musician/performer in halls!
Practicing and frothing at the mouth
Practicing and frothing at the mouth
I feel like ranting.
I am not allowed to play in the Residence Hall I live in (I could while I was an undergrad, but for some reason life has gotten way more regulated as a postgrad, which is ridiculous) and have been dealing with that since last term by hiking to the college every day to practice in either the music room or the chapel. It's a pain, but what are you going to do?
So I went up there today at about 9:30pm and a choir was in the chapel, so I asked the porter for the key the music room, and he told me I wasn't allowed to play after 9. Which was news to me as I've played after 9 before, so I said, "Well, I'll just wait until the choir's out of the chapel." And the porter said, "No, can't go there, either. No music after 9." I said, "What?" and he pointed out that he didn't make the rules. Keep in mind, the chapel is a totally unattached building. Then he added, "Starting next week, there will be no music allowed after 6." I asked incredulously, "Even in the chapel?" He said, " Yup. Exam time." I snapped something about how I needed to move out of halls and stormed out of the porter's lodge.
As I was walking back along the street, some drunk teens in a car honked their horn and made some catcalls at me as they zipped past, and I was angry enough that I yelled quite loudly, "Go to h*ll you f*cking a*holes!!!!" I doubt they heard me, but the other people walking down the street certainly did.
I ended up practicing in the back seat of my car until it got too cold. Ridiculous.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
Ah yes... the prcticing space delima. I used to use the practice cubicles in the music conservatory on campus. Do they have any of those?
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
That sucks, Silver Spear!
When I got told off for practicing low whistle in our paper-thin walled apartment, my playing suffered and we eventually moved out of there.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by morning star
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
Too cold??? Haven't you got a sleeping bag? Um yeah I think you need to get the hell out of there. If I didn't feel I could play at home more or less any time I wanted it would drive me nuts. Maybe you should put together an ad for a room in a shared house with another musician or two.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by Conán McDonnell
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
The yobs calling out of cars are regrettably common on Durham's road system, especially near roundabouts as far as I can make out. Best thing is to stifle the natural reaction to jump out of one's skin, and register no response. If you find yourself in North Road, drop in at the Shakespeare Hall; there's an outside chance they might let you use a room, or put you on to some other place - just a thought.
All the best.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by nicholas
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
Or - you could start a war. Seriously - get a petition going. Music is really important - its mad that you cant find a place to practice - uni should be encouraging its students to become well rounded individuals (in a perfect world). Reminds me of the "Free Hug" fellow here in Sydney. Have you guys heard of him? He was interviewed on Oprah and all. Basically he used to go to pitt St mall in the city with a sign that said "Free Hugs" - and he'd go around hugging people - just to be nice, not creepy - just to loosen up everyone and bring a smile to peoples faces. Anyhow - he got banned and the cops were brought in. He started a petition and got 10,000 signatures now he is allowed to hug anyone he likes! Good on him I say.
You can sit back and let it happen and be unhappy - or you could go out and start a revolution, You could start a link here and I'd bet you'd get loads of signatures just that way - before you even start around your campus! PS - if neighbours complained about my music i'd tell em to bugger off!
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by bb
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
I have paper thin wall problems too, and as i'm very much a beginner on fiddle i can see why people wouldn't want to hear me. Though i think if you play half decently i don't see why anyone should mind - though of course they do, seeing as your single, unapplified music is proably seriously interfereing with their precious tv/pop music appreiciation.
I've resorted to proactising in the bath with a mute, which i hate, when people are in. For some reason the bath room is the most sound proof room in the house. Though its also small and cramped. And i hate mutes with a venegence but what can you do *shrugs* i also practise outside in summer, when its dry. In a big field near my house, that works pretty well but not at this time of year obviously.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by velvet
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
My family hate my whistle. (All my whistles.) So I practice in the Park near work. I've come to recognise wind direction pretty accurately. When I get back to work my colleagues ask me what the weather was like, and typically I'll say "wind south-westerly, veering westerly, moderate." If it's bucketing I stay indoors. Mostly.
The park is usually deserted, although the lady who had a stroke comes and chats with me. It's nice to chat, but I need the practice.
It's a while since I was at Uni, but don't you have a Student's Union with a Music Room? At Edinburgh there was one at each union. It wasn't ideal, because events like dances would take over the entire union. But it was an alternative.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by Innocent Bystander
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
I used to play with a whistle player years ago in London. He worked as an environmental officer - responding to complaints about noise, and one day he had to go and call on someone at home - but as they weren't in he decided to wait in his car. He had his whistle with him, so decided to do a bit of practice to while away the time. A few jigs and reels later, someone tapped on his car window, saying something along the lines of 'keep the noise down' - only not that polite!
It still makes me laugh out loud today!
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by calum's van
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
Ah - is a practice a performance or not?
(ducks, to avoid flying instruments....)
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by Mark Harmer
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
The word "performance" only becomes combustible when combined with the word "session." As long as the two words stay separated they are perfectly safe. You can combine either of these words with any other word you like as long as those two words aren't included in the same sentence together. Just to be safe... I recommend wearing safety goggles if you use these two words in the same paragraph.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by Phantom Button
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
Good advice! I pressed the "post" button using a No4 bargepole (metric version) with insulating ferrules, just to be on the safe side.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by Mark Harmer
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
A session Is a performance, Phantom. It's playing in public, with bystanders looking on. Everyone with a command of the English language knows that! Oh, S##T! Duck!
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by Farr
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
I feel your pain.
I've had to fight for my right to practice all my life. started when i was playing the guitar. my brothers would go mental if the could hear me strumming through thier precious Home and Away. si I bought an electric and just used headphones.
it was worse with the sax. i can only play that when there is a hurling match on or everyone within a five mile radius is gone to the pub.
Now with the fiddle though, they dont seem to mind as much. Maybe they cant hear me.... but i like to tell myself that they can, I just sound great 8-P
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by session savage
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
why didnt my siley face work 8-P
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by session savage
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by session savage
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
To go back to the original question........there must presumably be someone resposible for these regulations, there must be some sort of public forum where you can bring this up and simply ask why ?
If not, start a petition.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
You are in a sad situation, my heart goes out to you. Whistles are easy to mute, and there are a slew of mutes for strings, but for uilleann pipes ~ YES!, actually, but I haven't had the full experience. We have several times had the pleasure of a piper in different situations, and one, a 'ceili band', a piper who also made reeds. He described to me making plastic reeds that cut the volume down considerably, and we tossed around the advantages of that. He did a lot of experimentation. I'm not in contact with him anymore, sadly, but maybe someone here knows someone that can make you at least a practice chanter reed, then you could make a tent under layers of sheets and blankets and practice at least the chanter to your heat's content. Knowing the price for a full set of reeds, and not completely happy with the idea of hauling a full set into your 'tent', at least you'd be able to do chanter practice?
Great Highland Bagpipers use a practice chanter and I've had my hands on one only once, but it was considerably quieter than the full blown squeeze... The one I'd tried was mouth blown....
'Innocent Bystander' ~ get a bit of flexible plastic, or not, and cut it into a thin strip, just wide enough to fit in the window of your whistle. Bend it so the first bend goes over the knife edge, then gend it over the next outside rise of the fipple so the longer end lies parallel to the whistle body, so it doesn't stick out. It can actually mute it that much, depending on the material and thickness and the edge the wind breaks against to produce the sound, that you could play quietly on a public bus with less noise than someone's earphones make...
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by ceolachan
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
Thanks Ceolachan. I make my own Plastic whistles, so they tend to be a bit quieter than the average. But I'm coming around to examining mutes and tweaks. I'll explore that.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by Innocent Bystander
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
I was playing a few after-gig tunes (always the best bit of the evening, after the PA's turned off - it sometimes even stops the audience in their tracks) with some band-mates in a very grand establishment in Central London on Friday night, when one of the staff came over and told us we had to stop. "It's nearly 1 o'clock!" he said. "So what?" I thought. It wasn't a residential area. There were no neighbours. Once all the cleaners had gone home, there's be nobody there until the next function, or at least, the next morning. Even if there's a caretaker living there, the building is so vast and robustly built that he couldn't possibly hear anything more than a wall's thickness away. So why bother with these rules?
However, reading Silver Spear's story makes me realise how lucky I am. In fact, after another gig the following night, we managed a good three sets of unplugged tunes during clearing up time, and nobody bothered us. In fact, it was another band member's having to be up early next morning that called it to a close.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
BTW Sliver. No music in the *Music Room*? Doesn't that remind you of a certain sketch about a cheese shop? In fact, if only you played the bouzouki, you could go and practise in a cheese shop (...which actually reminds me of passing through the singularly dull central-French town of Flers, which redeemed itself when I met a man practising his saz in a kebab shop).
I did occur to me that perhaps the porter didn't like you because your pipes weren't Northumbrian enough for him.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
I'm sure there's a solution to the practice space problem. Just keep looking, perhaps post an ad looking for "rehearsal space", make nice with the actual music students and faculty - you might get a break from them.
F--- the begrudgers.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by Hanley
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
Thanks for the support and encouragement.
I tried the muted whistle thing for a while (you can mute a whistle by placing poster putty over the fipple) and the twit who lives a couple doors down the hall from me must have complained because I was told to stop playing, muted or otherwise. I was also informed it was categorically against college regulations to play a musical instrument in the halls. Recorded music, however, is kosher so I occasionally play techno loudly on my laptop speakers (borrowed from shared itunes music of course, since I don't own any of that stuff) just to be obnoxious, but legally obnoxious so they can't do anything about it.
Presumably it disturbs people who are doing actual academic work. Whereas yelling in the halls or blasting punk rock doesn't. Sure. These regulations defy logic.
I need to work out who in the college I can kvetch to who would be sympathetic and could do something about it. A lot of people figure, well, you don't NEED to play and people NEED to study, so you're f*cked. Trick is to find someone who doesn't share that attitude.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
I was going to suggest that Silver, make friends with faculty, music faculty in particular. Also, you might try the science department ~ YEAH! ~ I've known a lot of science majors and graduates who were into science, and they often have these little out of the way places. If it's chemistry, well, sometimes there are smells to contend with, but there are possibilities... Sometimes you need to work squiff of the usual expectations. There are sure to be folks there that will sympathize and may have a solution for you. If you have a media department they may have 'studios'?!
Best of luck, and let us know if you find something...
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by ceolachan
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
Yeah, I know about the putty but I prefer the strip of plastic, and you can make it work for arced knife edges too. It is just more portable and less messy ~ and I think it works better over all, and no oil or risk of staining plastic whistles blue... (Yeah, I know you can get white putty too...) Also, you can make one from just about anything ~ though a swiss army knife is nice to have on hand...
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by ceolachan
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
I once almost (she smoked like hell) dated a classical piano player who lived by a street which has heavy traffic 'round day and night. The appartment she lived in was a single fairly small room in which there was this huge expensive grand piano standing in the middle of the floor. Despite the constant awkward traffic noise the neighbours kept on complaining about her playing which was truly very good. Finally she had all the walls padded with a thick something and that finally satisfied the neighbours. Imo, they mostly seemed to be annoyed by the (classical) music, not the terrible car noise they had there all along.
# Posted on January 30th 2007 by Risto
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
Eddie Damm from Song of The Sea makes a uilleann whistle chanter. It is the same fingering and mechanics as the pipes, yet is a whistle. Mebbe you can get your hands on one of these? His site is http://www.songsea.com/uwc.htm#UILLEANNWHISTLE
If its still too loud, I'm sure that trick ceolachan mentioned will work for this.
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by rob_handel
Re: Practicing and frothing at the mouth
I havn't read all the comments in the thread so I might be repeating someone, but why on earth have you gone back into halls of residence? You can get a room in a shared house for the same price as halls anywhere in the country and if your house mates are sound (as mine are) you can practise as much as you like. It's also a hell of a lot cheaper for accomidation in Durham than it is down here!
If that's not an option - screw 'em all! tell them it's essential reasearch for your studies. If you STILL can't do it, make a point to practise often and loudly outside the principals door in protest until the whole campus joins in and the b*stards crack. seriously, you should organise a campaign or something, I'm positive your not the only musician/performer in halls!
# Posted on January 31st 2007 by Daniel Gott