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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU - to let my children practice the piano

224 replies

Beanmummy · 30/01/2018 14:51

We live in a 1930's semi detached house. We have a piano and the DC have piano lessons and are grade 4 and 2. They practice for about 40 minutes tops a day and may be a bit more at the weekends.

The piano used to be out in the back room of the house, well away from our neighbour, but due to being next to 3 outside walls the piano was going out of tune and falling to bits and we were told it should be in a room with a more constant temperature.

So we have moved the piano into the front room.

I have just seen the neighbour and explained to him that we had moved the piano. He is not a happy bunny at the best of times, and started to compliant that he could hear the piano from his bedroom, when we had it in our back room (his bedroom was the furthest point away that it could be). Now he says it's like having the piano in the same room! Which I do understand, but we are never playing at unreasonable times. My DC's don't wake early - so at weekends it does tend to be mid-day or afternoon and after school.

AIBU to him, or does this seem reasonable, it's not as if they are just bashing the piano!

OP posts:
claraschu · 31/01/2018 04:54

You people who hate live musicians practising- do you think no one should learn how to play an acoustic instrument? That is so sad. 40 minutes a day at a reasonable time is really not a big deal, even if you don't love it.

Do you think that only rich people who can afford detached houses should have kids who learn to play instruments?

newshmoo74 · 31/01/2018 06:13

My neighbour’s son got a drum kit for Christmas. When I heard it I was ready to be extremely annoyed but my neighbour communicates with me, she let me know that he needs to practise and asked if I had any objections to 29 minutes at reasonable times of the day.

I only wish my son would practise piano as regularly.

newshmoo74 · 31/01/2018 06:14

Obviously I meant 20 minutes. 29 would be very precise.

Agapanthus1984 · 31/01/2018 06:20

If I was your neighbour I'd be annoyed. What about an electric piano keyboard with weighted keys? A lot of musicians in orchestras play these as they're portable. With earphones plugged in they're silent.

PineappleScrunchie · 31/01/2018 06:36

We lived in a 1930s semi with musical neighbours. The only noise that carried between the houses was their piano and violin practice. They were very good and the music was pleasant but very loud - we couldn’t have a conversation or watch tv in the adjoining room or the room above.

ivykaty44 · 31/01/2018 08:04

Clawdy - we have piano and flute her, the piano is beautiful and she is really good 😃

Minxmumma · 31/01/2018 08:12

If he is going to moan about a poorly baby crying he is going to moan about any noise.

If they aren't playing at 2am then tell him to toddle along. Do what you can to soundproof the wall or start one of them on bagpipes....

Butchmanda · 31/01/2018 08:23

Agapanthus: I think you're confused about what constitutes an orchestra! Grin

whiskyowl · 31/01/2018 08:25

Whether you like it or not, we all have to share this planet with other people. I worry about the degree of inflexibility that people show, and the lack of skills around sharing, in threads like this. It suggests that many people are lacking in a crucial capacity to work and live side-by-side with tolerance. I wonder how much modern life, with its rigid boundaries and its isolation, contributes to this - we would all have been living in a much more communal way a few hundred years ago. It's like we've retreated into these small knots of the nuclear family, with huge well-armed cultural walls around us to prevent any incursion from the outside..

This isn't a holier-than-thou critique. I recognise those same traits in myself at times. I can be an anti-social fucker too! But I know that they tend towards intolerance and loneliness and that I need to work against them because ultimately, we all need some social contact to stay sane. We need difference and otherness, it does us good to encounter it.

emmyrose2000 · 31/01/2018 08:27

I can't believe how many people think it's perfectly acceptable to be anti-social with noise

hoovering at reasonable hours: fine
toilet flushing: well, that's life.
but music and tv? I am sorry, but if your neighbours can hear them, then they are too loud!

radios, tv, parties ... if your neighbours can hear them, they are just too loud, it's very simple. There's no reason in the world why a neighbour should have to put up with loud music or loud tv.

Agreed.

OP, You are being very unreasonable.

taskmaster · 31/01/2018 08:43

But that just nonsense. If you live in a terrace with thin walls you are going to hear things like tv and radios and pianos. It doesn't mean they are too loud, it means your walls are too thin. And you chose to live there, so you have to live with it.
The idea that no-one living in a terraced house should ever play a radio or watch tv or play an instrument is as ludicrous as it is offensive.
Pianos only for rich people in detached houses, right?

beresh · 31/01/2018 09:35

I live in a flat, but as a (now electric) piano player myself, with violin playing children, I was pleased when my upstairs neighbour informed me they were getting a piano for their 3 young children.

The noise was incredible and was loud enough to wake me up early in the morning. I didn't complain, but when my neighbour asked if I could hear the piano I told her it was disturbing me. She bought a thick rubber mat to go under the piano, special caster cups and put a large sprung mattress between the piano and the wall.

I can still hear the piano enough to make out the tune being attempted but it is no longer an incessant, intrusive, noise that seemed to make the furniture vibrate. Now it's just the normal background sound of neighbours! I'd recommend going round to your neighbour to check how loud the piano is and seeing if you can take steps to reduce the volume level.

Flippetydip · 31/01/2018 09:50

@Indaro - thanks so much for the tip. Am going to get two now!

Thanks

TheDisillusionedAnarchist · 31/01/2018 10:22

Next door's DD is learning piano. We are sometimes woken up at 7am by her practising. It doesn't bother us at all.

Fortunately both us and the neighbours both sides (terraced houses) are mutually tolerant of normal family noise. Can't afford a detached house? Well you have to live with noise then.

Clawdy · 31/01/2018 11:38

So, in other words, it serves you right for not having enough money? Nice one Hmm

Ifailed · 31/01/2018 11:44

Clawdy Quite. Apparently only the wealthy should expect some peace and quiet, the plebs should just put up with whatever's thrown at them because they are not worthy.

SilverySurfer · 31/01/2018 12:03

I wouldn't be thrilled to hear piano playing next door but fortunately I'm hard of hearing and can't hear a thing. Even if I could hear it I wouldn't complain, as PP have said, it's part of everyday life.

If your neighbour continues to grumble, urge your DCs to learn to play the bagpipes Grin

ShastaTrinity · 31/01/2018 16:10

taskmaster

I am afraid you are the one talking absolute nonsense. Of course you do not live the same way in a terraced or in a detached house!
I managed to spend years living in flats without being submitted to loud tv or loud music from the others, and not to be a nuisance myself.

There are enough ways to play an instrument silently for others, or to reduce to noise to a maximum.

When I watch tv or listen to music in my own house, the other residents are not submitted to a racket either, you keep the volume down not to bother anyone else.

If you are a noisy neighbour, it's because you chose to be and you are being rude.

taskmaster · 31/01/2018 16:34

I'm really not. People make noise. Music is part of life. If you don't like that, you need to remove yourself from other people and their normal every day, perfectly acceptable noise.

And grow up a bit while you are at it.

ShastaTrinity · 31/01/2018 16:42

Are you as charming in real life as you are on this forum taskmaster?
I assure you not everybody is rude and entitled, and it's perfectly possible to live in close quarter, flats or terraced, with considerate neighbours. It makes life so much more pleasant.

bastardkitty · 31/01/2018 17:09

There are enough ways to play an instrument silently for others, or to reduce to noise to a maximum.

^ sure. In many terraced houses you can hear what your neighbours are doing even when there are not being excessively noisy. It's about being reasonable with the timing. ShastaTrinty you have been quite insulting to another poster but you are being quite obnoxious yourself.

claraschu · 31/01/2018 17:11

Shasta it is not possible to learn to play an acoustic instrument without making a sound. A big part of practising is working on the tone that you produce.
If you think that no one should ever make a sound that is audible to the neighbours, you are saying that no one except rich people in detached houses should play the violin, cello, piano, oboe, flute, viola, etc.

ShastaTrinity · 31/01/2018 17:18

bastardkitty
Unlike the poster I was replying to, I wasn't insulting! It's a grown-up forum, I am allowed to reply to someone who is having a go at me, and I stayed perfectly pleasant to that person.

bastardkitty · 31/01/2018 17:26

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

ChaosNeverRains · 31/01/2018 17:35

The reality here is that noise is a part of every day life. There can be ways of reducing genuinely excessive noise but practice in the middle of the day for less than an hour really isn’t excessive.

I can currently hear one of next door’s children crying and the dad is having a conversation with her. Can’t hear what is being said but can hear that there is a conversation going on involving both parents and a child, and they’re not shouting.

But the thing here is that it’s 5:30 in the afternoon so is a perfectly normal time of day for having a conversation which could be heard through the walls of an adjoining house/flat.

I am a musician. I have a keyboard which has a sub-woofer speeker attached to it. This can produce excessive base, and I turn down the speeker in order to minimize the noise to the neighbours. I do not however feel that I have an obligation to only ever play the keyboard with headphones during the middle of the day when everyone is going about their normal every day lives. I don’t turn it up to the max and neither do I play it through an amplifier or the like, but the general volume is no different to what e.g. a stereo would be.

However, in the evening I do take account of the fact that we have neighbours who have young children who are probably in bed relatively early, and based on that I would probably play with headphones after around 7 PM. Even though the same neighbours play their piano up to about 10 pm.

People who object to noise e.g. acoustic drum kits which can probably be heard about three streets away let alone in the house next door, or excessively loud music from a stereo or amplifier, are one thing. People who object to every day noise in the middle of the day are unreasonable and need to get a grip. Noise is a part of life. Do they think that it’s unreasonable to e.g. allow children to play outside and be children? Or for cars to drive by on their roads? A piano being played in the middle of the day is no different to that. Everyone has their anoyance levels, but just because you don’t like the sound doesn’t make you reasonable and them not.

If someone posted here that their neighbours’ children were playing out in their garden at 2 PM and making normal children’s noise for an hour and they could hear it as their garden is close no-one would be very sympathetic to that. And yet they might reasonably not like hearing it. But it’s still a part of life.