the loudness factor....

Spectron

Spectron

Silver Member
Where do you practice? Have your neighbors ever complained?
Has your family gone insane from your practice time yet?
Drum are freakin' loud - there's no way around it.
I tune my kit wide open and I play like I mean it- my drums are like thunder it shakes the whole house....some people just can't handle it...

My wife can't be in the house when I play....so I slip home at lunch from work and play for 30minutes, I get another 30min to an hour after work before my wife gets home....
and I get 1 or two chances over the weekend to play while my wife goes shopping or on a walk....

My neighbors have never complained but they all know I play drums...LOL
Seriously I walked outside while my friend played and they can be heard clearly a block away....
 
My kit is in my unfinished basement and it is loud. To help dampen the sound I bought some remnant carpet scraps and surrounded the entire kit with it. You can still hear it outside but not as loud as without it. I get home from work between 1-2pm and have 3-4 hours to play before my wife and neighbors get home. My neighbors all know I play and have never complained about them.
 
I only play when my wife is out too, but luckily (for me) my wife has a multi-hour commute, does a lot of volunteer work, and goes out more than I, so I have a decent amount of play-time. And on days where we're home together all day, I'll still do an hour or so on the practice pad.

My two immediate neighbors asked about the drums within the first week, but not since then, and it was conversational, not a complaint. My wife says they're not very loud from right outside the house. Luckily, we had all our windows/doors replaced about a month before I got my drums (newer 2 pane windows), I think it would have been a lot worse with the old 70's era single pane windows.

Plus when I first got my drums (and the neighbors commented), I had them set up in the front room of the basement next to the front window (split level house so its not a deep basement). Since then I've moved them to the back room, further from any windows (more in the middle of the house), so that's probably helped a little.

I also gave myself time limits, 11am-9pm, just to be more considerate. Every night I play I stop at 9pm sharp, even if I'm mid-song/exercise.
 
back when I was in highschool and lived home my dad would actually take a nap in the next room while I played to rush albums with headphones on. When I stopped I could hear him snoring. one of my neighbors commented years later to me that he and his family would sit on their front porch and listen to me ( I never knew) they were 3 houses away in in a quiet neighborhood. The only time someone complained was one weekend afternoon my band came over to practice, we never played at my place, and I guy from accross the street came over screaming that his kids were napping! that was crazy because when he calmed down he wanted to hire us for a local firemans picnic.
 
My little area is an the extra patio room at the back of the house. The back of the house opens up to a nice public park. I know my neighbors next to me and everyone across the park can hear me. No one has complained, I keep my hours reasonable - like after 12PM until 8PM I could be playing. And alot of times it's quiet practicing, but sometimes not - you have to play with sticks some of the time!

I plan to upgrade the house in the future and actually replace the patio room with an actual room dug into the ground and acoustically treated to keep sound going out to a minimum. I have the plans, just not the money!

I'm lucky, when I lived at home, mom and dad never minded me practicing. When I went to a friend's house with his young son learning to play drums in his room, I was amazed at how loud it was - and I thought back to all those endless days of me banging away while the family was home. Bless 'em!
 
When I was growing up, I set my drums up in my parents' basement, and it must have been pretty loud upstairs even with all the carpet and insulation above me, but my parents were very cool with it - "We know right where you're at, so we like it."

When I got out on my own, I bought pads, plastic cymbals, and mesh heads for practicing, as well as a full Remo practice pad kit, until I could finally move into a house as opposed to an apartment. The drums went up in the garage, and I went around the neighborhood introducing myself, explaining what I did, and that I planned on drumming no earlier than noon and no later than 9 pm on any given day. I gave them my phone number and asked them to call me if they ever had a problem with the noise level, needed quiet or anything else. I repeated this process when it became clear that my garage was the best place for my new band to practice. Not only did I never get one complaint, but the neighbors and their kids used to come sit outside the garage to listen to me or the band practice... and actually once a guy driving by heard us, stopped, and offered us a gig at his bar!

My plan in my new house is to sink a basement under the house I'm getting ready to build, finish it, and include a soundproof ceiling. As far as I know, the best soundproofing is ground surrounding concrete.
 
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