Neighbors find my piano playing "disruptive"

[ebhales]

My neighbors have made it known that they do not like my piano playing. I finally received a letter rather than the usual pounding on the wall. The request was for me to not play between the hours of 6-10pm which I'm not able to comply with because I work during  the day. I actually don't practice past 9, but that's not the point. This is the first time I've ever experienced this and was wondering what would be the best way to handle this. Honestly I'm fuming. How would they like it if I asked them to not watch TV between the hours of 6-10pm? Maybe they want me to start at 11?

[theholygideons]

Depends why they don't want you to play between 6-10pm. Is it because they work very early in the morning or that they are studying for some exam? Also, the duration you practise could be a factor. However, if you only practised 1 hour, then I would consider that bearable for any decent person. you could sound proof your walls, re-voice your hammers, or take them to court.. ?

[flashyfingers]

Get up and play right before work, around 6 or 8 am.

Get an electric piano and practice quietly and with headphones on

[thalbergmad]

Tell them to piss off.

Thal

[indianajo]

I've got garbage trucks and forklifts beeping their backup alarms all hours across the road. Then when a neighbor started a petition campaign against the factory (which employs 80 workers), she complained about the 24 hour stack fan, which is white noise and not objectionable to me.  
 You think your neighbors will listen to reason?  Piano players are now a minority, that makes us obviously "wrong".  If you went to court, you would probably lose, whereas if you were watching football too loudly, everybody on the jury would salute you.  
Give your neighbors the speech about how many dollars or euros do they want sent overseas to pay oriental production workers to produce another electronic piano.? No wonder we have low employment in Europe or North America: the answer to every question is import another $$$$ gadget.   There hasn't been an electronic piano made here since 1980.  
I gave up piano to work 70 hours per week for enough salary to buy me a house 50' from the nearest neighbor in all directions.  I can play as loud as I want, anytime I want.  It is not the most prestigeous neighborhood, in fact there is a factory across the street 130' away.  There is a lot of heavy truck traffic.  But the utilities are conveniently complete, necessary stores and bus service are close, and the taxes are low and the crime is limited to traffic offenses. I have 8' hedges to keep cars from driving through my yard when the stop sign backs up.   If my neighbor decides to invite 350 Harley motorcycles to park in her yard some Saturday night, I don't complain the first time.  Perhaps you could give up piano for a decade to earn enough to  pay for a better place to live, then go out and find it.  I changed cities and moved 1000 miles from the city of my birth and education: Houston TX  was just too dense and increasingly expensive as I was in my earning prime years.    

[ebhales]

Just to answer some questions. I play up to 2 hours a day (probably 90 minutes on average) 2-4 days a week. They did not make any compelling arguments as to why these times are off limits other than they want peace and quiet after work. Also I can hear they have an electric guitar.  I think I'd be more willing to accommodate if they weren't so rude about it all to begin with. I'm pretty sure this isn't a matter of legality. I play at reasonable times and I abide by the ordinances of the city. I will not be making any purchases to appease the neighbors.

[ebhales]

Also to give up the piano and move is an absurd suggestion.

[Bob]

Tell them to piss off.

Thal

Pretty much that.  Just follow whatever the rules are for the place and neighborhood you're in.  If the neighbors don't like something that's within the rules, it's their problem.

[flashyfingers]

Tell them to piss off.

Thal

Or leave psychotic, threatening notes speaking of murder and rape, if they don't piss off. Give them 2 weeks to move.

[outin]

If you are not breaking any rules, the only compromise you could do is to ask them if there's a specific time they would prefer you to play or not to play (within reason, not what they suggested) and then consider if it's doable for you.

I live in a flat and this house has bad sound proofing, I can sometimes hear the upstairs neighbourgs talking loud or the kids running around. The house has rules that you are not allowed to make noise after 10 pm or before 7 am. Still I've made slightly stricter rules for myself to never play with the acoustic before 9 am (even later on weekends) or after 9 pm. And I've never heard anything from the neighbours even if I am sure they don't love to listen to my practicing. I think if I insisted on waking them up at 9 on weekends or playing till 22 pm every day I might, since they kids are still young and probably go to bed earlier. But clearly what your neighbours suggested is just ridiculous...

[flashyfingers]

If you are not breaking any rules, the only compromise you could do is to ask them if there's a specific time they would prefer you to play or not to play (within reason, not what they suggested) and then consider if it's doable for you.

The house has rules that you are not allowed to make noise after 10 pm or before 7 am. Still I've made slightly stricter rules for myself to never play with the acoustic before 9 am (even later on weekends) or after 9 pm.

I live in a house with neighbors that cannot hear me, and I still make that same rule, in case someone does hear me.

[indianajo]

With my 1" thick plaster walls, and 50' wall to wall space, I play at 3 AM if I want to.  PIano, electric organ, or 120 W stereo.  It's payback time. 

[cwjalex]

start practicing at 3 in the morning and see how they like that. 

just out of curiosity what kinds of pieces are u practicing?  i am glad that i have an electric keyboard that i can control the volume cause i am positive nobody would want to listen to me practice.  I will put on a movie or watch videos and sometimes practice 2-3 difficult measures over and over for hours on end loL. 

[j_menz]

Just to answer some questions.

Just to add a couple.

You live in an apartment, I take it.

Is your piano an upright? Where is the back of it - on your common wall or on another purely internal wall(ie, one that backs onto somewhere in your own apartment)?

Thin hard un-soundproofed/-insulated walls can act as amplifiers if the soundboard of the piano is up against them. You may be making more noise in your neighbours apartment than you think (and as much or more than in your own).

[ebhales]

Just to add a couple.

You live in an apartment, I take it.

Is your piano an upright? Where is the back of it - on your common wall or on another purely internal wall(ie, one that backs onto somewhere in your own apartment)?

I live in a town home. The piano is an upright. It is not on a common wall, but an internal wall. The back is not touching the wall.

start practicing at 3 in the morning and see how they like that.  

just out of curiosity what kinds of pieces are u practicing?  

I was learning relatively quiet pieces at first: a Bach transcription, a Mendelssohn prelude, a Mozart concerto for the past 2 months or so.  I have noticed they get frustrated and yell expletives when I practice particular pieces more so than the others (they hate the Bach transcription) and when I repeat phrases over and over. But to play devils advocate I might have started practicing Beethoven's 5th about a week ago which was probably the straw. I don't feel bad. I'm sure they appreciate the Bach sessions now.

[flashyfingers]

But to play devils advocate I might have started practicing Beethoven's 5th about a week ago which was probably the straw. I don't feel bad. I'm sure they appreciate the Bach sessions now.

Hahahah!!!

GOOD TIMES!

[Bob]

What about moving the piano to a far room, if possible?

[bronnestam]

What about being mature to begin with, that is, go and speak to them. Perhaps some direct communication is all that it takes.
Plan B: get a digital for the hours they don't want you to play. Or check if you can move your piano in order to make it less disturbing.

[ebhales]

What about being mature to begin with, that is, go and speak to them. Perhaps some direct communication is all that it takes.
Plan B: get a digital for the hours they don't want you to play. Or check if you can move your piano in order to make it less disturbing.

The piano is as far back as it will go in the townhouse. I am on a graduate student salary. I will however accept any and all donations.

So in regards to your indirect implications that I am immature, I wrote a reply note saying I will not be able to comply to your time frame, but I will try to be more mindful on the weekends and if they have anymore concerns to feel free to talk to me at the front rather than through the walls.  I have not received a reply.  Direct communication at this point would do no one any good as I am still angry.

[cbreemer]

I wrote a reply note saying I will not be able to comply to your time frame, but I will try to be more mindful on the weekends and if they have anymore concerns to feel free to talk to me at the front rather than through the walls.  I have not received a reply.  Direct communication at this point would do no one any good as I am still angry.

Seems a reasonable compromise given your current state of mind. You'll have to talk to them at some stage though. Assuming they are decent people of good will (which most people are) you
must be able to agree on something that is acceptable to both. So that they would not longer have any ground to complain.

[timothy42b]

Mark Twain said it best:

A Touching Story of George Washington`s Boyhood
 




Mark Twain
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

 
 
If it please your neighbor to break the sacred calm of night with the snorting of an unholy trombone, it is your duty to put up with his wretched music and your privilege to pity him for the unhappy instinct that moves him to delight in such discordant sounds. I did not always think thus: this consideration for musical amateurs was born of certain disagreeable personal experiences that once followed the development of a like instinct in myself. Now this infidel over the way, who is learning to play on the trombone, and the slowness of whose progress is almost miraculous, goes on with his harrowing work every night, uncurled by me, but tenderly pitied. Ten years ago, for the same offense, I would have set fire to his house. At that time I was a prey to an amateur violinist for two or three weeks, and the sufferings I endured at his hands are inconceivable. He played "Old Dan Tucker," and he never played any thing else; but he performed that so badly that he could throw me into fits with it if I were awake, or into a nightmare if I were asleep. As long as he confined himself to "Dan Tucker," though, I bore with him and abstained from violence; but when he projected a fresh outrage, and tried to do "Sweet Home," I went over and burnt him out. My next assailant was a wretch who felt a call to play the clarionet. He only played the scale, however, with his distressing instrument, and I let him run the length of his tether, also; but finally, when he branched out into a ghastly tune, I felt my reason deserting me under the exquisite torture, and I sallied forth and burnt him out likewise. During the next two years I burned out an amateur cornet player, a bugler, a bassoon-sophomore, and a barbarian whose talents ran in the base-drum line.

I would certainly have scorched this trombone man if he had moved into my neighborhood in those days. But as I said before, I leave him to his own destruction now, because I have had experience as an amateur myself, and I feel nothing but compassion for that kind of people. Besides, I have learned that there lies dormant in the souls of all men a penchant for some particular musical instrument, and an unsuspected yearning to learn to play on it, that are bound to wake up and demand attention some day. Therefore, you who rail at such as disturb your slumbers with unsuccessful and demoralizing attempts to subjugate a fiddle, beware! for sooner or later your own time will come. It is customary and popular to curse these amateurs when they wrench you out of a pleasant dream at night with a peculiarly diabolical note; but seeing that we are all made alike, and must all develop a distorted talent for music in the fullness of time, it is not right. I am charitable to my trombone maniac; in a moment of inspiration he fetches a snort, sometimes, that brings me to a sitting posture in bed, broad awake and weltering in a cold perspiration. Perhaps my first thought is, that there has been an earthquake; perhaps I hear the trombone, and my next thought is, that suicide and the silence of the grave would be a happy release from this nightly agony; perhaps the old instinct comes strong upon me to go after my matches; but my first cool, collected thought is, that the trombone man`s destiny is upon him, and he is working it out in suffering and tribulation; and I banish from me the unworthy instinct that would prompt me to burn him out.

After a long immunity from the dreadful insanity that moves a man to become a musician in defiance of the will of God that he should confine himself to sawing wood, I finally fell a victim to the instrument they call the accordeon. At this day I hate that contrivance as fervently as any man can, but at the time I speak of I suddenly acquired a disgusting and idolatrous affection for it. I got one of powerful capacity, and learned to play "Auld Lang Syne" on it. It seems to me, now, that I must have been gifted with a sort of inspiration to be enabled, in the state of ignorance in which I then was, to select out of the whole range of musical composition the one solitary tune that sounds vilest and most distressing on the accordeon. I do not suppose there is another tune in the world with which I could have inflicted so much anguish upon my race as I did with that one during my short musical career.

After I had been playing "Lang Syne" about a week, I had the vanity to think I could improve the original melody, and I set about adding some little flourishes and variations to it, but with rather indifferent success, I suppose, as it brought my landlady into my presence with an expression about her of being opposed to such desperate enterprises. Said she, "Do you know any other tune but that, Mr. Twain?" I told her, meekly, that I did not. "Well, then," said she, "stick to it just as it is; don`t put any variations to it, because it`s rough enough on the boarders the way it is now."

The fact is, it was something more than simply "rough enough" on them; it was altogether too rough; half of them left, and the other half would have followed, but Mrs. Jones saved them by discharging me from the premises.

I only staid one night at my next lodging-house. Mrs. Smith was after me early in the morning. She said, "You can go, sir; I don`t want you here; I have had one of your kind before -- a poor lunatic, that played the banjo and danced breakdowns, and jarred the glass all out of the windows. You kept me awake all night, and if you was to do it again, I`d take and mash that thing over your head!" I could see that this woman took no delight in music, and I moved to Mrs. Brown`s.

For three nights in succession I gave my new neighbors "Auld Lang Syne," plain and unadulterated, save by a few discords that rather improved the general effect than otherwise. But the very first time I tried the variations the boarders mutinied. I never did find any body that would stand those variations. I was very well satisfied with my efforts in that house, however, and I left it without any regrets; I drove one boarder as mad as a March hare, and another one tried to scalp his mother. I reflected, though, that if I could only have been allowed to give this latter just one more touch of the variations, he would have finished the old woman.

I went to board at Mrs. Murphy`s, an Italian lady of many excellent qualities. The very first time I struck up the variations, a haggard, care-worn, cadaverous old man walked into my room and stood beaming upon me a smile of ineffable happiness. Then he placed his hand upon my head, and looking devoutly aloft, he said with feeling unction, and in a voice trembling with emotion, "God bless you, young man! God bless you! for you have done that for me which is beyond all praise. For years I have suffered from an incurable disease, and knowing my doom was sealed and that I must die, I have striven with all my power to resign myself to my fate, but in vain -- the love of life was too strong within me. But Heaven bless you, my benefactor! for since I heard you play that tune and those variations, I do not want to live any longer -- I am entirely resigned -- I am willing to die -- in fact, I am anxious to die." And then the old man fell upon my neck and wept a flood of happy tears. I was surprised at these things; but I could not help feeling a little proud at what I had done, nor could I help giving the old gentleman a parting blast in the way of some peculiarly lacerating variations as he went out at the door. They doubled him up like a jack-knife, and the next time he left his bed of pain and suffering he was all right, in a metallic coffin.

My passion for the accordeon finally spent itself and died out, and I was glad when I found myself free from its unwholesome influence. While the fever was upon me, I was a living, breathing calamity wherever I went, and desolation and disaster followed in my wake. I bred discord in families, I crushed the spirits of the light-hearted, I drove the melancholy to despair, I hurried invalids to premature dissolution, and I fear me I disturbed the very dead in their graves. I did incalculable harm, and inflicted untold suffering upon my race with my execrable music; and yet to atone for it all, I did but one single blessed act, in making that weary old man willing to go to his long home.

Still, I derived some little benefit from that accordeon; for while I continued to practice on it, I never had to pay any board -- landlords were always willing to compromise, on my leaving before the month was up.

Now, I had two objects in view in writing the foregoing, one of which was to try and reconcile people to those poor unfortunates who feel that they have a genius for music, and who drive their neighbors crazy every night in trying to develop and cultivate it; and the other was to introduce an admirable story about Little George Washington, who could Not Lie, and the Cherry-Tree -- or the Apple-Tree -- I have forgotten now which, although it was told me only yesterday. And writing such a long and elaborate introductory has caused me to forget the story itself; but it was very touching.

[cbreemer]

Ahahah that is just hilarious  . Thanks for posting this.
What a genius was Mark Twain ! I must really seek out some of his work to read.