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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Piano playing in a terraced house!

89 replies

FuckingPiano · 25/03/2015 13:49

Have put up with the neighbours fucking piano playing for the last couple of years! We live in a terrace housed, 2 up, 2 down. Theirs end-terraced with 2 reception rooms, the fucking piano could go in the reception room not attached to our house. But no, they've decided the reception room that shares the wall with our house is their music room!
It has actually got better. The playing was anytime from morning through to 10pm at night whenever they fancied a 'quick tinkle'. I haven't asked nicely if they'd move the fucking thing to their other room away from our house as if they respond with no (which I imagine they will) I'd combust! Banging on the wall stops the fucking thing.
It is now a half-hour piano lesson a week for the kid but is on the day I work from home and dread having to listen to the fucking thing whilst trying to concentrate on work. There's been no progress with the playing in these couple of years and don't get why they don't give the fucking thing up!
However, they do still occasionally like to have a 'quick tinkle' on the thing at random times -usually late at night. (We have small children and none of us can get away from the fucking playing it can be heard in every room).
The kid is now also learning the fucking trumpet!
All this time I've considered contacting environmental health and providing a record of the times it's played. However, we don't plan to stay in this house forever (all uncertain, dependant on finances) and don't want to have to declare a dispute if we do (as per plan) move in the next 5 years.
What would you do?

OP posts:
MrsAidanTurner · 25/03/2015 15:16

I honestly dont know why people in dense living dont get key boards, you can play to hearts delight and no one will know

bigTillyMint · 25/03/2015 15:18

Actually, DD had/has a keyboard. But it's nowhere near as good as the sound or feel of a real piano.

treaclesoda · 25/03/2015 15:19

People in dense living could of course get keyboards, but they won't be much use to them if they want to play the piano.

Unless you mean a proper digital piano, and in that case the reason that people don't buy them is probably the cost. A decent one that replicates the sound and feel of a piano effectively costs a fortune.

ClaudetteWyms · 25/03/2015 15:21

Wow YABU and unreasonably angry!

I live in a terraced house and play the piano (no trumpet though!). It's not against a party wall but neighbours directly attached to the room it's in are lovely and have never said anything. Neighbours on other side asked me to keep it down Sunday mornings so that they can have a lie in and I am doing that, obviously it bothered them enough to say something (nicely). No harm done.

It could be a lot worse - banging metal music, screaming hordes of children I have them round too sometimes, barking dogs...

You sound very angry. If you need to live in silence you need a detached house somewhere isolated.

leedy · 25/03/2015 15:22

Yeah, I have a decent enough stage piano/keyboard with a weighted keyboard etc. and I'd still love a "proper" piano - the tone etc. isn't quite what you'd get on a good actual piano. I've played some superb digital pianos, mind, but they are, as you say, exorbitantly expensive.

KumquatMay · 25/03/2015 15:29

MrsAidanTurner

The OP can have whatever rights she wants, but they're pretty pointless if she won't take the most obvious, least disruptive and hopefully most effective course of action to uphold them. I was actually trying to make the point that the most straightforward way to handle this, at least in the first instance, is to speak to her neighbours.

Tanith · 25/03/2015 15:57

Good Heavens! You haven't even been in to talk to them and you're banging on the walls Shock

It's a good job you don't live next to DD's music teacher. They're in a terraced house, both she and her husband teach and they have two pianos - one a baby Grand Smile
They have lovely neighbours, though, and they're all very friendly.

My DS, incidentally, serenades the people waiting at the bus stop outside when he's home from school.

Go and talk to them, Op! Nicely, like a civilised human being.

shovetheholly · 25/03/2015 16:03

OP, I am concerned about the level of frustration and anger in your post. I do not think it is normal or reasonable to feel that way about half an hour of piano playing. It's hardly the worst sound in the world, and provided it's not between 11 and 6 in the morning I think you should try to find ways of enjoying it instead of seeing it as an imposition.

My neighbours play - not very well, but I think it's lovely and I enjoy listening to them have fun. The two teenage girls next door sometimes have a screechy row, and I find this highly amusing too. They are lovely people and I am sure that there are things that I do that impinge on their space too, but life in a house that adjoins another is always a matter of give and take.

MrsAidanTurner · 25/03/2015 16:07

of course she is angry! So would you be if you had years of this, like she has.

Some people are not able to express themselves well, its odd, that having lived in a terrace for so long, op has not been able to say in passing her pain caused over piano.

I agree Kumq she needs to speak to them, but I don't agree she should have to go to extreme sleights to avoid the noise.

UptheChimney · 25/03/2015 16:31

YABU. Completely.

Maybe as well as anger management, you need to go to a music appreciation class? Or just a good manners class?

Alisvolatpropiis · 25/03/2015 17:00

This is a reverse, surely?

LikeABadSethRogenMovie · 25/03/2015 17:50

This thread is making me want to go and play my piano Blush

FuzzyHeaded · 25/03/2015 18:05

YANBU about the times of playing - my DH and I don't play after 9pm and the only reason we feel comfortable playing that late is because our downstairs neighbour is very deaf and we know she is still up as we can hear her very loud television! (She also commonly tells us she thinks we're on holiday because she hasn't heard us making any noise, so we know she doesn't hear!)

But, YABU to be so furious and YABVU about the kid playing during the day. DH and I lived in a block of flats once with very strict rules about music - I was told when we signed the lease I could never play my saxophone, and we could only play the piano between noon and 2pm, which is hardly a convenient time to play. Except we then got threatened with the piano being banned because the person above us - whose kids seemed to enjoy running up and down the room above us, a lot - objected to us playing during the day because he was trying to work! My feeling about the whole thing was that yes, people have a right to peace and quiet in their home, but people also have a right to practice their hobbies within their homes as well, and these two rights have to accommodate one another. Everyone makes noise, and courtesy dictates that this should be limited to certain times wherever possible, but not that people should be silent in their own homes.

ChampagneBabyCakes · 25/03/2015 18:20

I'm delighted your neighbours are learning music! Much better than watching tv and playing computer games.
Maybe you could discuss suitable practise times - tell them what does and doesn't work for you. If they are reasonable they should try to match it.
Also, the council will only take you seriously if they are playing at unsociable hours.
If you are so angry you feel you can't speak to them, maybe write it nicely in a card?

Momagain1 · 25/03/2015 18:23

MrsA: sometimes you have to put forth effort for your own comfort. The neighbors arent being particularly unreasonable and will not have to completely change their lives to solve her problem, so as a reasonable adult, she should consider options other than stewing in rage.

maninawomansworld · 25/03/2015 18:24

This is one of the more aggressive posts I have read on here about something relatively innocuous.

Reading this and some of the other responses on here, I can clearly see that none of you have ever had to live next to a noisy neighbour!

Personally I think having to listen to someone learning a musical instrument is one of the WORST things imaginable so I really feel for you OP , especially as the culprit isn't even your own child.

When DW and I were first living together we lived in a little terraced house in a local town and the walls were paper thin. It drove me up the wall being able to tell what the neighbours were watching on TV. They weren't a particularly quiet bunch as it was but I think there would have been a very real danger of me murdering someone if they had taken up the piano or trumpet.
All the time I knew the plan was for us to move back to the family farm in a couple of years and take over the big detached house with no neighbours for miles (which we now have - thank god). It was the ONLY thing that kept me sane.... knowing that this wasn't 'my lot' so to speak and the noisy neighbours were only very temporary.

Stay strong!
Is there any way of moving sooner than planned? 5 years seems like a long time to stick the noise.

reni1 · 25/03/2015 18:34

I have lived next to a saxophone learner and a violin beginner, maninawomenworld before I had a family. Loud but a noise of life itself. As are all children's noises. We now are the musicians.

I have also lived next to a family of rowdy drunks, much more annoying.

Yes to agreeing to before 9pm etc, no to stopping people playing the piano and children learning. And definitely no 8 fucks needed to describe a child's effort on the piano. OP's small children no doubt have their own cloud of noise.

CunningCat · 25/03/2015 18:34

Personally I love Rachmaninov's Piano concerto number 2. But if they play badly I can see that it would be very annoying.

MrsAidanTurner · 25/03/2015 18:35

Reading this and some of the other responses on here, I can clearly see that none of you have ever had to live next to a noisy neighbour

Cleary not but I HAVE. And it was RAGE inducing.

Its very selfish to knock the op because YOU don't mind the sound of a piano Confused.

I had one, and it was WAY too loud. I got rid of it. I would never ever get one now, in a terrace.

I dont care if key boards, are not good enough, tough titties.

Noise is intrusive . YES it is is unreasonable to play a very loud instrument in houses with thin walls!

Just like playing loud music all the time etc etc.

reni1 · 25/03/2015 18:39

I have. It's OK. No worse than kid's playing noisily or TV on loud and better than many other neighbours.

MissM · 25/03/2015 18:40

MrsAidanTurner are you the OP too? No-one on here has knocked the OP particularly, they've just said that she needs to get rid of her rage and then go round and start communicating with the neighbours. No point busting a blood vessel because you won't speak to someone.

reni1 · 25/03/2015 18:43

But how OK or not it is is besides the point. OP is stewing in silent fury for 2 years, neighbours might have no idea. Effing and blinding on a forum and banging the walls will achieve more resentment and nothing else. Go next door, tell them what the problem is, do not use the word fuck, do not tell them the child's play is rubbish and see if a solution can be found.

HesterShaw · 25/03/2015 18:43

I have a piano and I live in a terraced house.

But then, I am fucking good

reni1 · 25/03/2015 18:44

x post

Quangle · 25/03/2015 18:45

I live in a terraced house next to a piano player (teenage daughter). I can hear her a lot. Also singing. But they are pretty good and in all other respects good neighbours. I just thank god they don't play other kinds of music with bass thumping - that's far worse imho.

I once had to bang on the wall when the daughter was practising singing in her bedroom (next to mine) at 11.30pm but I think she just genuinely didn't realise. I would have gone round but was already in bed.

I think as long as it's not all the time and it stops at reasonable times, it's ok. Presumably if it's children practising they don't go on forever, even if it feels like it.