I have always considered acoustic guitar playing something that no one would much mind, plus its not like its really abrasive. I was at a show recently, and a couple I was standing next to was talking about how a neighbor of theirs played the guitar, and the guy disliked, but the girl enjoyed the texture. I couldn't help listening in a little more, but they lived in my building, and were upstairs neighbours of mine. At the time I say 'Right now I live in San Francisco', and I kept my window open, to have a steady flow of fresh air. But the window opened to an alley way with the next building being the wall. So the sound just projected up the wall to all of the apartments. No one ever directly complained, or even mentioned anything after my speaking with the couple. But some how more than my four friends knew I was playing guitar, and organ on my cheep keyboard. Sometimes its difficult to know just how much the sound is projecting.
such are the tribulations of apartment living. everyone has a particular sound they don't like when it comes to living in an apartment. for example, my next door neighbor loves when I practice my shuttle pipes (image that!) but can't stand the sound of the neighbor's tv upstairs.
for me, it is when the neighbor upstairs gets the stomach flu. can't really deal with that very well...
I overheard my next door next door neighbours bitching when I first took up the fiddle: I spent my first 3 hours on it practising four notes just to work on the bowing! But that's ok because one of the reasons I took up the fiddle was to p!ss them off
Those people have a history of harassing other neighbours, so it was good to get back at them.
I would be a lot more self-conscious if my neighbours were nice of course.
I sometimes have full band practices at my house - including full drum kit! My next door neighbours don't mind and the other neighbours deserve everything they get for letting their children kick footballs against my wall/fence/house/car etc There are a lot worse ways to upset the neighbours than playing music!
About a year or two (or more) ago there was a thread about an elderly gentleman whose neighbors complained about his playing the fiddle. I think the city threatened to sue him for violating the noice ordinance. I was someplace in Canada.
I threw a party a few years ago, where we ended up playing in the kitchen (5 fiddles, box,banjo,whistle and guitar) with the window open. My street is very narrow with an appartment-block across. At around 3 o'clock in the morning the neighbour two floors up from me came down and plead for us to stop. Her windows weren't thick enough.
I bought an electric fiddle so I could play wearing the ear phones and no one would be bothered. HOWEVER, I told the neighbors if they didn't keep thier brats from harassing my dog I was gonna buy an amp!
I lived in an apartment with paper thin walls for many years. At the time I played with some friends, mostly pub tunes WITJ, Clancy Bros, Dubliners etc. and mostly at my friend’s house. One song we were working on was Kilkelly, that tear-jerker song by Peter Jones. I played mandolin and sang the lower harmony, which I found hard, the melody line always dragged me over. So I found myself walking around my apartment, trying to get the harmony to the first note just to orient myself. It’s an Em chord, so I’d lustily sing the E note, then drop down to the B note: KILL kill KILL kill KILL kill over and over again. Suddenly I realized what that might sound like to others and stopped. The entire building was eerily silent.
“I see people turn their heads and quickly look away”
When I first started playing the fiddle I lived with a boyfriend - one day he tried very gently to request that I try to be more reasonable about the amount of time I spent practicing so as not to irritate the downstairs neighbours.
My feeling is - if you're not breaking any laws, or any relationships, play as loud as you have to whereever you have to.
Unless of course, you're exceedingly self-conscious about your playing, but until you've done this with a fife, you have no idea how loud an acoustic instrument can be. I imagine GHB comes close, but they definitely do not have that shrill component that cuts through the din of battle.
Short anecdote:
Years ago my fife and drum corps was practicing outdoors one Wednesday evening (normal rehearsal night).
One of the drummers related that later that evening a neighbor of his told him that he had heard us playing - from about 7 miles away! (OK, it was across the water, with a fortuitous tailwind, but still!)
I play electric guitar about as often as flute, in my apartment. It's definitely above conversational level as well - fairly loud. My neighbors can definitely hear it, but they are quite cool about it and tolerant.
Apparently whistles and flutes cut through apartment walls moreso than electric guitars. While my neighbors are still very tolerant, they all immediately commented when I started playing those new instruments.
The worst was trying to practice GHB in college. Dorm rooms were absolutely out of the question, so I went down to the music department to try their practice room/cubicles. No go. So I practiced in the college cemetery, until a neighboring apartment manager complained.
Young lad: The only trouble about university so far, mother, is the other night when people were pounding on the floor and walls of my dormatory room at 2 AM
Mother: Do they wake you?
Young lad: No, fortunately I was already awake, practicing my bagpipes.
We sang Sacred Harp in the back garden one Sunday afternoon last year - we did warn the neighbours first. It can't have been worse than the back-garden disco two doors down the year before.
Fidkid --- LOL! Reminds me of the time a housemate was appearing as Lady MacBeth in a college production of Shakespeare. On a fine spring afternoon she was practicing her cry of "Murder!" with various dynamics, intonations, etc. Eventually we noticed that the hippies next door, who had been working in their garden, were cautiously creeping around the house, peering in the windows. My housemate had a wicked sense of fun, so just as one of them carefully tiptoed up to our front door, she flung the door open and treated him to a full blown blood-curdling shriek of "MUUURRRRRDDDDEERRRRRR!" Then she gave him a 400-watt smile and asked him if he had his tickets to the play yet.
I'm lucky, my neighbor is very sweet and tolerant. But then I deliberately play on the side of the unit away from our common walls, so as to keep her that way! ;) When I had upstairs neighbors, I practiced in the dining room, which was the maximal distance from their bedroom, and they in turn gracefully put up with the occasional very late-night playing.
I went to a summer session at a distant college once and had to live in a dorm. My neighbors didn't like ITM. They played loud Rap with subwoofers. Then they set off the fire alarm once or twice a week smoking pot in the stairwell.
My only option was to find secluded places on campus where I could practice. My first experience were cops lecturing me about no street playing for money being allowed. I kept telling them I wasn't collecting money, I was just practicing. I had to move. I found another place near the freeway, so my noise would not be a louder issue than the traffic. After a few minutes, I saw a flutter of women by the windows of the adjacent 6 story building I thought had classrooms. It was a dorm. The cops stopped by. I think their names were Murphy and Molloy, and they liked the music. However, I left to find a less controversial spot. There was a place with a modernist sculpture that looked like a mound of bricks superglued together. I was going to sit down in an inconspicuous place when these college students with skateboards attacked doing 180's, 360's, 720's off of the sculpture. I finally found a nice spot on a large campus lawn. I played for 20 minutes, then a young father and his two sons set out a picnic blanket and sat down. They were dressed like extras from "Brave Heart." The kids had plastic swords for mock battles. They danced to the music. So I finally found a spot. However, its really difficult. Even if you find a public spot, there are people that will come up and want to talk, which ultimately kills practicing.
A neighbor (app building) once called the police and complained about the volume of my playing. They did not come and speak to me first and the police was not to reveal the source of the complaint either. I was very upset when they just showed up at my door until.....the oplicemen told me that I wasn't breaking any laws but they had to respond to the complaint. "you sound good" they said with a smile; "carry on".
Bliss: So how do you fit in with your neighborhood with your hurling sticks - supersize spoons?
Tedium: Didn't that woman remarry to a bodhran player? .
Innocent Bystander: Yes, I am in Woodsey Nutter's heaven here in the Sierra Mountains. I encountered scarey looking wildlife this week: a pair of Banana Slugs. Yuk!! They were going to attack me, but I got bored and left. The people I do meet at my sites are very friendly and supportive.
lol, cath, I never thought of that. Wasn't much of a drinker, that one. When I left I went straight to a tiny island and rented a cabin for a few months with NO neighbours but the sea and a very tolerant golden lab. At the end of that I was much less annoying to listen to.
One of my friends used to play the electric base in his appartement, really loud and only heavy metal. He never got any bad comments for this, but the neighbours started complaining when he started playing classical tunes on the recorder! (He was a quite bad recorder-player though...)
My neighbours keep having screaming babies so they are in no position to say anything to me about my practising. I am waiting for them to have a kid that can scream in tune to my playing!!
Luckily I live in terraced house that has two foot thick stone walls - so right now I can play at any time of the day or night without fear of recriminations. However, as soon as the sale is completed I'm moving to another continent and for a while I'll be staying with my wife's parents- quite how they'll take loud flute/banjo/bagpipes and didgeridoo for hours on end is another matter. I think I'll have to find somewhere to practise away from the house or risk certain death
"This is one of the reasons why some of us, who can, practice in the woods."
My choice by preference, but I can't always pull it off. Today I had to settle for an abandoned parking garage across the street from a KFC. Not the same thing at all.
I used to live next door to a Viennese couple. He used to put Blasmusic on and I used to play along on accordion.
When I had a band practise at the house, I could hear them singing and dancing next door.
Parking garages ROCK for practicing pipes. Reverb for decades. The only problem is that the crossbeams on the low ceilings can take out one's bass drone.
I think my flute sounds better inside. I play in public parks a lot and you lose a lot of sound reflection outside.
My local public library has effing great acoustics in its covered entryway though. Flute in particular sounds really good there.
Went down there tonight for a little after midnight fiddle practice, to give the neighbors a break, and after about 15 minutes the night guard cracked the door open and held his cell phone out at me for about 5 minutes.
He knows someone who really appreciates bad Bach I guess. Or likes a good laugh.
When I was at uni I used to practice fiddle in my flat but the girl upstairs didn't seem to like it...kept jumping on the floor every time I began (some tunes were worse than others) So I tried playing quieter...then putting my mute on...trying to judge when seh was out...eventually I left a stinking note through her door saying that I was doing everything possible (mute on all the time, not playing at unreasonable hours etc) and that I wasn't going to stop playing and if she still had a problem she should come down instead of just jumping! She stopped - bat sadly I was now so aware that other people could hear my less than perfect practice that I also stopped. Occasionally I would play in the kitchen instead but my confidence was crushed and it wasn't til I left uni a year and a half later that I really started playing again!
My husband recently bought me an electric fiddle for my birthday so I can now play as loudly as I want and no-one cares! Yippee!!
I'm currently having that problem - neighbours who object to playing piano for twenty minutes in the middle of the day. How dare I? The dodgy thing is I really want to be able to teach...... Not just want to, have to, mortgage to pay! So what do I do - keep going and hope she'll get used to it? And do they have any right to complain if you only play between 10am and 10pm?
Well, I'll have to say yes, I think. I lived upstairs once from a woman who moved in and then proceeded to run exercise classes out of her apartment, complete with very loud pounding disco music, from 7 am to 10 pm.
At the time, I worked nights.
I don't mind a bit of music from an apartment next door, but this was ridiculous. I talked to her, I turned up my stereo to try to cover it (didn't work), I tried reason, pleading, shouting, asking her to start after 9 so I could get at least two hours sleep before she started in. Her stance was that if I wanted quiet in my apartment, I should move to the mountains. At that point, my response was to ask her if she had a permit to be running a business out of our apartment building, and then I complained to the landlord, who asked her to move to an apartment in the same building, below the guys who played pounding music day and night, so I assume that then we were all happy.
Can you use an weighted key keyboard with headphones?
Slight difference - she's talking about a piano being played well, which doesn't bother anyone in the house I'm living in. Not about pounding disco music. She works normal shifts and just expects to be able to live next door to a musician without hearing *any* music.
If she wants to buy me a weighted key keyboard she can go ahead....
Incidentally, we're talking about one hour a day, and possibly teaching two hours one evening in the week, deliberately trying to arrange it for the evening that she does something else. No compromise, not willing even to say one particular hour within which I can practise.... I'm coming very close to telling her exactly where to go...
Re: Considering the neighbours?
Re: Considering the neighbours?
I have always considered acoustic guitar playing something that no one would much mind, plus its not like its really abrasive. I was at a show recently, and a couple I was standing next to was talking about how a neighbor of theirs played the guitar, and the guy disliked, but the girl enjoyed the texture. I couldn't help listening in a little more, but they lived in my building, and were upstairs neighbours of mine. At the time I say 'Right now I live in San Francisco', and I kept my window open, to have a steady flow of fresh air. But the window opened to an alley way with the next building being the wall. So the sound just projected up the wall to all of the apartments. No one ever directly complained, or even mentioned anything after my speaking with the couple. But some how more than my four friends knew I was playing guitar, and organ on my cheep keyboard. Sometimes its difficult to know just how much the sound is projecting.
ICF
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by ianforsyth
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
such are the tribulations of apartment living. everyone has a particular sound they don't like when it comes to living in an apartment. for example, my next door neighbor loves when I practice my shuttle pipes (image that!) but can't stand the sound of the neighbor's tv upstairs.
for me, it is when the neighbor upstairs gets the stomach flu. can't really deal with that very well...
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by pelsor
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
It's usually "stamping the foot" along with the music which causes the problem.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by Johnny Jay
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
I overheard my next door next door neighbours bitching when I first took up the fiddle: I spent my first 3 hours on it practising four notes just to work on the bowing! But that's ok because one of the reasons I took up the fiddle was to p!ss them off
Those people have a history of harassing other neighbours, so it was good to get back at them.
I would be a lot more self-conscious if my neighbours were nice of course.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by Cath
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
I sometimes have full band practices at my house - including full drum kit! My next door neighbours don't mind and the other neighbours deserve everything they get for letting their children kick footballs against my wall/fence/house/car etc There are a lot worse ways to upset the neighbours than playing music!
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by Tarrantella
Considering the neighbours?
If you can hear them hammering on the wall then you're not playing loud enough
Trevor
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by Trevor Jennings
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
About a year or two (or more) ago there was a thread about an elderly gentleman whose neighbors complained about his playing the fiddle. I think the city threatened to sue him for violating the noice ordinance. I was someplace in Canada.
What ever happened to him?
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by Jiml
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
I threw a party a few years ago, where we ended up playing in the kitchen (5 fiddles, box,banjo,whistle and guitar) with the window open. My street is very narrow with an appartment-block across. At around 3 o'clock in the morning the neighbour two floors up from me came down and plead for us to stop. Her windows weren't thick enough.
S
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by snorre
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
I bought an electric fiddle so I could play wearing the ear phones and no one would be bothered. HOWEVER, I told the neighbors if they didn't keep thier brats from harassing my dog I was gonna buy an amp!
It's all about respect.
Mary
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by Antikhntr
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
I lived in an apartment with paper thin walls for many years. At the time I played with some friends, mostly pub tunes WITJ, Clancy Bros, Dubliners etc. and mostly at my friend’s house. One song we were working on was Kilkelly, that tear-jerker song by Peter Jones. I played mandolin and sang the lower harmony, which I found hard, the melody line always dragged me over. So I found myself walking around my apartment, trying to get the harmony to the first note just to orient myself. It’s an Em chord, so I’d lustily sing the E note, then drop down to the B note: KILL kill KILL kill KILL kill over and over again. Suddenly I realized what that might sound like to others and stopped. The entire building was eerily silent.
“I see people turn their heads and quickly look away”
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by fidkid
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
When I first started playing the fiddle I lived with a boyfriend - one day he tried very gently to request that I try to be more reasonable about the amount of time I spent practicing so as not to irritate the downstairs neighbours.
So I left him.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by Kerri Brown
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
Way to go Kerri! A less drastic way is to encourage him to go and see his mates down the pub - about 2 or 3 hours every night.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by Cath
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
Kerri: Perfect solution.
My feeling is - if you're not breaking any laws, or any relationships, play as loud as you have to whereever you have to.
Unless of course, you're exceedingly self-conscious about your playing, but until you've done this with a fife, you have no idea how loud an acoustic instrument can be. I imagine GHB comes close, but they definitely do not have that shrill component that cuts through the din of battle.
Short anecdote:
Years ago my fife and drum corps was practicing outdoors one Wednesday evening (normal rehearsal night).
One of the drummers related that later that evening a neighbor of his told him that he had heard us playing - from about 7 miles away! (OK, it was across the water, with a fortuitous tailwind, but still!)
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by FyfferGuy
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
I play electric guitar about as often as flute, in my apartment. It's definitely above conversational level as well - fairly loud. My neighbors can definitely hear it, but they are quite cool about it and tolerant.
Apparently whistles and flutes cut through apartment walls moreso than electric guitars. While my neighbors are still very tolerant, they all immediately commented when I started playing those new instruments.
The worst was trying to practice GHB in college. Dorm rooms were absolutely out of the question, so I went down to the music department to try their practice room/cubicles. No go. So I practiced in the college cemetery, until a neighboring apartment manager complained.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by wormdiet
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
Young lad: The only trouble about university so far, mother, is the other night when people were pounding on the floor and walls of my dormatory room at 2 AM
Mother: Do they wake you?
Young lad: No, fortunately I was already awake, practicing my bagpipes.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by AlBrown
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
We sang Sacred Harp in the back garden one Sunday afternoon last year - we did warn the neighbours first. It can't have been worse than the back-garden disco two doors down the year before.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by Guernsey Pete
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
Fidkid --- LOL! Reminds me of the time a housemate was appearing as Lady MacBeth in a college production of Shakespeare. On a fine spring afternoon she was practicing her cry of "Murder!" with various dynamics, intonations, etc. Eventually we noticed that the hippies next door, who had been working in their garden, were cautiously creeping around the house, peering in the windows. My housemate had a wicked sense of fun, so just as one of them carefully tiptoed up to our front door, she flung the door open and treated him to a full blown blood-curdling shriek of "MUUURRRRRDDDDEERRRRRR!" Then she gave him a 400-watt smile and asked him if he had his tickets to the play yet.
I'm lucky, my neighbor is very sweet and tolerant. But then I deliberately play on the side of the unit away from our common walls, so as to keep her that way! ;) When I had upstairs neighbors, I practiced in the dining room, which was the maximal distance from their bedroom, and they in turn gracefully put up with the occasional very late-night playing.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by sara g
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
I went to a summer session at a distant college once and had to live in a dorm. My neighbors didn't like ITM. They played loud Rap with subwoofers. Then they set off the fire alarm once or twice a week smoking pot in the stairwell.
My only option was to find secluded places on campus where I could practice. My first experience were cops lecturing me about no street playing for money being allowed. I kept telling them I wasn't collecting money, I was just practicing. I had to move. I found another place near the freeway, so my noise would not be a louder issue than the traffic. After a few minutes, I saw a flutter of women by the windows of the adjacent 6 story building I thought had classrooms. It was a dorm. The cops stopped by. I think their names were Murphy and Molloy, and they liked the music. However, I left to find a less controversial spot. There was a place with a modernist sculpture that looked like a mound of bricks superglued together. I was going to sit down in an inconspicuous place when these college students with skateboards attacked doing 180's, 360's, 720's off of the sculpture. I finally found a nice spot on a large campus lawn. I played for 20 minutes, then a young father and his two sons set out a picnic blanket and sat down. They were dressed like extras from "Brave Heart." The kids had plastic swords for mock battles. They danced to the music. So I finally found a spot. However, its really difficult. Even if you find a public spot, there are people that will come up and want to talk, which ultimately kills practicing.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by CeolCairdeas
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
A neighbor (app building) once called the police and complained about the volume of my playing. They did not come and speak to me first and the police was not to reveal the source of the complaint either. I was very upset when they just showed up at my door until.....the oplicemen told me that I wasn't breaking any laws but they had to respond to the complaint. "you sound good" they said with a smile; "carry on".
Avi
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by improziv
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
This is one of the reasons why some of us, who can, practice in the woods.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by Innocent Bystander
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
The Scarlatti Tilt (a poem by Richard Brautigan)
"It's very hard to live in a studio apartment in San Jose with a man
who's learning to play the violin."
That's what she told the police when she handed them the empty revolver.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by tedium
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
Fortunately my neighbours are usually busy hacking people to death with machetes to notice any music. I kid you not.
Or setting fire to each others houses, or joy riding, or just wrecking the place.
So the odd electric guitar blaring "Johnny be Good" from my house is not noticed.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by bodhran bliss
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
Bliss: So how do you fit in with your neighborhood with your hurling sticks - supersize spoons?
Tedium: Didn't that woman remarry to a bodhran player? .
Innocent Bystander: Yes, I am in Woodsey Nutter's heaven here in the Sierra Mountains. I encountered scarey looking wildlife this week: a pair of Banana Slugs. Yuk!! They were going to attack me, but I got bored and left. The people I do meet at my sites are very friendly and supportive.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by CeolCairdeas
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
lol, cath, I never thought of that. Wasn't much of a drinker, that one. When I left I went straight to a tiny island and rented a cabin for a few months with NO neighbours but the sea and a very tolerant golden lab. At the end of that I was much less annoying to listen to.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by Kerri Brown
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
The hurling sticks are a necessity, but they also think I am "connected" so tend to leave me alone.
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by bodhran bliss
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
One of my friends used to play the electric base in his appartement, really loud and only heavy metal. He never got any bad comments for this, but the neighbours started complaining when he started playing classical tunes on the recorder! (He was a quite bad recorder-player though...)
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by ceolina
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
My neighbours keep having screaming babies so they are in no position to say anything to me about my practising. I am waiting for them to have a kid that can scream in tune to my playing!!
# Posted on April 28th 2005 by Fudge
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
Luckily I live in terraced house that has two foot thick stone walls - so right now I can play at any time of the day or night without fear of recriminations. However, as soon as the sale is completed I'm moving to another continent and for a while I'll be staying with my wife's parents- quite how they'll take loud flute/banjo/bagpipes and didgeridoo for hours on end is another matter. I think I'll have to find somewhere to practise away from the house or risk certain death
# Posted on April 29th 2005 by Kelpie
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
"This is one of the reasons why some of us, who can, practice in the woods."
My choice by preference, but I can't always pull it off. Today I had to settle for an abandoned parking garage across the street from a KFC. Not the same thing at all.
KFG
# Posted on April 29th 2005 by KFG
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
I used to live next door to a Viennese couple. He used to put Blasmusic on and I used to play along on accordion.
When I had a band practise at the house, I could hear them singing and dancing next door.
# Posted on April 29th 2005 by geoffwright
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
Parking garages ROCK for practicing pipes. Reverb for decades. The only problem is that the crossbeams on the low ceilings can take out one's bass drone.
I think my flute sounds better inside. I play in public parks a lot and you lose a lot of sound reflection outside.
# Posted on April 29th 2005 by wormdiet
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
Not this one. It's not bad, but it's not great.
My local public library has effing great acoustics in its covered entryway though. Flute in particular sounds really good there.
Went down there tonight for a little after midnight fiddle practice, to give the neighbors a break, and after about 15 minutes the night guard cracked the door open and held his cell phone out at me for about 5 minutes.
He knows someone who really appreciates bad Bach I guess. Or likes a good laugh.
KFG
# Posted on April 30th 2005 by KFG
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
When I was at uni I used to practice fiddle in my flat but the girl upstairs didn't seem to like it...kept jumping on the floor every time I began (some tunes were worse than others) So I tried playing quieter...then putting my mute on...trying to judge when seh was out...eventually I left a stinking note through her door saying that I was doing everything possible (mute on all the time, not playing at unreasonable hours etc) and that I wasn't going to stop playing and if she still had a problem she should come down instead of just jumping! She stopped - bat sadly I was now so aware that other people could hear my less than perfect practice that I also stopped. Occasionally I would play in the kitchen instead but my confidence was crushed and it wasn't til I left uni a year and a half later that I really started playing again!
My husband recently bought me an electric fiddle for my birthday so I can now play as loudly as I want and no-one cares! Yippee!!
# Posted on May 2nd 2005 by Claremac
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
I'm currently having that problem - neighbours who object to playing piano for twenty minutes in the middle of the day. How dare I? The dodgy thing is I really want to be able to teach...... Not just want to, have to, mortgage to pay! So what do I do - keep going and hope she'll get used to it? And do they have any right to complain if you only play between 10am and 10pm?
# Posted on August 16th 2005 by tumeltyni
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
Well, I'll have to say yes, I think. I lived upstairs once from a woman who moved in and then proceeded to run exercise classes out of her apartment, complete with very loud pounding disco music, from 7 am to 10 pm.
At the time, I worked nights.
I don't mind a bit of music from an apartment next door, but this was ridiculous. I talked to her, I turned up my stereo to try to cover it (didn't work), I tried reason, pleading, shouting, asking her to start after 9 so I could get at least two hours sleep before she started in. Her stance was that if I wanted quiet in my apartment, I should move to the mountains. At that point, my response was to ask her if she had a permit to be running a business out of our apartment building, and then I complained to the landlord, who asked her to move to an apartment in the same building, below the guys who played pounding music day and night, so I assume that then we were all happy.
Can you use an weighted key keyboard with headphones?
# Posted on August 16th 2005 by Zina Lee
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
Slight difference - she's talking about a piano being played well, which doesn't bother anyone in the house I'm living in. Not about pounding disco music. She works normal shifts and just expects to be able to live next door to a musician without hearing *any* music.
If she wants to buy me a weighted key keyboard she can go ahead....
# Posted on August 17th 2005 by tumeltyni
Re: Re: Considering the neighbours?
Incidentally, we're talking about one hour a day, and possibly teaching two hours one evening in the week, deliberately trying to arrange it for the evening that she does something else. No compromise, not willing even to say one particular hour within which I can practise.... I'm coming very close to telling her exactly where to go...
# Posted on August 17th 2005 by tumeltyni
Re: Re: What consideration?
A good topic and a great opportunity to have a moan, eh?
My flat mates turn up the Heavy Metal rubbish on their stereo or the TV...while I'm practising.
It's not like I'm rubbish on the flute or whistle or I play for hours on end or anything like that.
My only solution is to leave as the flat belongs to them .
I handed them my notice and I'm leaving the place to go to a studio flat in a fortnight's time . Good riddance, I say.
# Posted on August 17th 2005 by flauta dolce