Ironic problem: what would you do?

[Nowarezman]

Maybe a polite letter to the parents of each band member.

 

It's possible that not all the band members would be unsympathetic. My buddies in high school, 1970-ish, always practiced in the drummer's garage. The mom would come out and tell them it was 9pm, time to stop. The drummer would yell and argue with his own mom - which I, being mostly sympathetic to the older generation (if they weren't being right-wing jerks) was embarrassed to see. The more obnoxious and/or spoiled kids usually got their way - when has it ever been different? But you might find you have an ally or two among the parents, or even in the band itself.

 

If nothing avails, at least it's a certainty that the band will break up, the kids will move on, the situation will eventually resolve itself.

 

My deep sympathies - my very elderly neighbor used to mow his yard at least three times a week with a very loud riding mower. We have an acre and lots of greenery - but it seemed whenever I was of a mind to chill out and enjoy the birds singing and the peaceful green surroundings, he'd be cranking up that damn thing again to take 1/4" off his acre of grass.

 

nat

[Notes_Norton]

I like Bob Jazzmammal's suggestion.

 

At least worth a try.

 

Notes

[Chip McDonald]

Be sure to invite the police to your yard so they can measure the decibels there. I don't know about where you live but they always measured from the curb in Fresno.

 

The problem there is that I live on a peculiar lot. Our house is about 1/4 mile back from an adjacent street, in the "center" of the block - not the street they're on. Our driveway is right on the other side of their fence - which is where their shed butts up against, and then there's our house. So where I'm sitting is about 30 feet from them, but they're about 100' from the road their house is on. Effectively speaking, we live in their "back yard".

 

I'm not worried from that standpoint though, because if the police responded to a call by coming down our driveway, it would be pretty obvious they're too loud. They're over 70 db inside my house often, I can identify the songs they're playing and when the bass player is flamming with the kick from inside my kitchen. I mean, the absurdity of how loud they are in their little shed is kind of comical, they're playing at stage volume in probably a 10x10' box.

[Chip McDonald]

 

Whats really funny to me is their song list sounds exactly like what I've been doing on Catalina Island every summer with the classic rock band. Every song you mentioned I've been doing and it's mostly middle age folks and younger who really dig that stuff.

 

That's the funniest.. most aggravating part. They're playing mostly songs I used to play 20 years ago *when the songs were current* in a cover band!

 

What more Life in the Matrix like it seems like maybe they've been listening to the new Stone Temple Pilots remaster of _Tiny Music from the Vatican_ , they're songs from the bonus tracks that STP apparently recorded at Club La Vela in Florida... ... which long ago, a student's cover band used to play those songs at for multi-week stays during Spring Break there - they'd get a really wild reception at the place. I'm sure when STP actually played there, they really, really went nuts - and now it's on an Official Recording. So now I'm getting to hear a rendition of those songs, maybe prodded by the "new" STP release? Hah.

 

Basically the aforementioned student's cover band, that used to do the frat circuit in the 90's played the same set these guys in their late teens/early 20s are partially doing next door. Which is fine, I try to get my guitar students to NOT bypass the cover band experience, but ... yeah.

 

]

That classic Hendrix/AllmanBros/Joe Walsh/Santana stuff is way better than modern R& B.

 

... you'll get no argument on that from me!

 

 

 

This little garage band could have a nice part time gigging future if they have a decent singer.

 

They've got a singer. He *could* be ok, except they haven't got the message yet about maybe not having your singer do songs that he can't sing. He's passable on some songs, the STP stuff is a little too detailed for him to track pitch wise, but then they try to do ... is it called "Apache" by Audio Slave? He's NOT Chris Cornell. I'd be going next door and stealing a singer... He's ok, raw novice, except when yodeling over his register.

 

I would guess they're about ... a year out from their First Gig. 2 years from getting some polish post-gigs.

 

... but I don't want to hear them while they're in training. Particularly since THAT'S MY DAY JOB.... ahrgh.

 

You know their set list by now so how about setting up your guitar amp outside and when you see them showing up to start practicing you start playing one of their tunes but better than their guy plays it? If you are truly better than they are then do a medley of their stuff and see if somebody comes to the fence to talk.

Play some SRV backing tracks and solo your ass off to it, that'll get their attention. Ordinarily I would never interfere with another band like that but you're getting desperate and all of you are kindred spirits, they just don't realize it yet.

 

That's what my wife wants me to do. Wheel the 4x12 to the back door. Maybe if covid wasn't around I'd knock on their shed door and go "hey, hand me the guitar, count off that song" but... it would probably make them mad I would guess, based on their attitude.

 

Entitled? Of course they're entitled, what did you expect?

 

I just remembered. When we first moved here 10 years ago, the nephew was "sort of" into skateboarding. A pre-irony was that (as an avid skater when I was a little kid to about .. 14) his father was building him a mini-half pipe ramp in the backyard, again right against the fence.

 

I found it ... alienating. The kid must have been around 12-14. I'd come home from the office, and he'd be playing in their backyard while his dad was working on building the ramp. Now and then he'd come over and look on as his dad cut plywood and nailed.

 

He wasn't even trying to help at all. Get off my lawn: "when I was 12 I BUILT and maintained MY OWN, not 4' mini, but 8-10' HALF PIPE". Frakking frak. I had to listen to the kid fakie back and forth a few times everyday, with his friends standing on top hanging out. Then that degenerated into - the harbinger of the apocalypse - riding the little ramp with ... with... SCOOTERS!!!

 

"Scooters"????

 

"Chip, in the 21st century kids will ride skateboards with handlebars unironically".....

 

 

... that went on for about a year, and then nothing until now. I remember thinking then "well, I can't complain about the ramp sound, my neighbors dealt with that for years" (not right outside their back door, mind you...) Ahrghh.

 

 

"Ahrghh".

[Chip McDonald]

Maybe a polite letter to the parents of each band member.

 

I would guess they're in their late teens/early 20s, so I don't think they'd care too much - even if I knew who they were.

 

 

]

The mom would come out and tell them it was 9pm, time to stop. The drummer would yell and argue with his own mom - which I, being mostly sympathetic to the older generation (if they weren't being right-wing jerks) was embarrassed to see.

 

Ironically the first time I was about to jump the fence and say something to them last year, I stopped because some people came into their backyard, and knocked on their shed door. What I heard was:

 

"hey you guys, we live next door, you sound great!"

 

"Cool, we were afraid you were shutting us down!!!"

 

 

Me: "hahahaha."

 

 

 

My deep sympathies - my very elderly neighbor used to mow his yard at least three times a week with a very loud riding mower.

 

We live in a Post-Weed Blower world. A peaceful residential outdoors audio environment can no longer be had.

 

(having said that, we bought this place I'm at because it sets back "in the woods" in a almost-downtown residential neighborhood on about 3 acres. Out our "front door" are just trees and a swamp. You can almost think you're not near anybody when you don't hear people racing sport bikes on the freeway a mile away, or the leaf blowers, the rattle of infrasonic subs in cars (somebody on the other side of the block has a car that is so infrasonic objects rattle inside my house, but you don't actually hear anything).... then there are the birds that imitate car alarms, the giant fireworks display that goes off at the bottom of the hill at the stadium every weekend, the horrible marching band renditions of songs from the HS football stadium a block over, and...

 

I swear, *the world wasn't this noisy when I was a kid!!!*. It's not Get Off My Lawn-ism - leaf blowers, sport bike racing, cars with subs, neighbors that don't care about bothering others, .... I grew up the same distance from another HS football stadium as a kid, maybe 10 miles from here, and I *never* heard the marching band (or the BASS PLAYER for the marching band, or the Rabid Yelling Throng). Now the "marching bands" have bass players and p.a. systems?

[Anderton]

I swear, *the world wasn't this noisy when I was a kid!!!*. It's not Get Off My Lawn-ism - leaf blowers, sport bike racing, cars with subs, neighbors that don't care about bothering others, .... I grew up the same distance from another HS football stadium as a kid, maybe 10 miles from here, and I *never* heard the marching band (or the BASS PLAYER for the marching band, or the Rabid Yelling Throng). Now the "marching bands" have bass players and p.a. systems?

 

FWIW, Bernie Krause has spent decades crisscrossing the globe to record the sounds of wildlife. He says it is no longer possible to find anyplace on earth where you won't hear man-made sounds, if only a plane going overhead.

[Joe Muscara]

I swear, *the world wasn't this noisy when I was a kid!!!*. It's not Get Off My Lawn-ism - leaf blowers, sport bike racing, cars with subs, neighbors that don't care about bothering others, .... I grew up the same distance from another HS football stadium as a kid, maybe 10 miles from here, and I *never* heard the marching band (or the BASS PLAYER for the marching band, or the Rabid Yelling Throng). Now the "marching bands" have bass players and p.a. systems?

 

FWIW, Bernie Krause has spent decades crisscrossing the globe to record the sounds of wildlife. He says it is no longer possible to find anyplace on earth where you won't hear man-made sounds, if only a plane going overhead.

Anthropocene

The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth"s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet"s climate and ecosystems.

 

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/anthropocene/

[Notes_Norton]

We have small gasoline motors almost every day. Lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and so on.

 

I live without turning on the air conditioner (for both environmental and comfort reasons) and it's a rare day when I'm not disturbed by the drones of mowers and blowers. I wish my neighbors would synchronize their lawn service days

 

I am guilty of the same. I don't keep a lawn, but on my half-acre I do mow the street right-of-way, about 6-12 feet around my house, and under the solar clothes dryer (clothesline). Half the lot is a meadow of native vegetation and non-invasive adapted to our environment plants. It feeds bees, butterflies and squirrels and rabbits, squirrels and snakes call it home.

 

Leilani and I do practice a couple of times a week when we aren't gigging (COVID) and when we learn new songs. We always do it mid-afternoon when most of our neighbors are not at home. I have talked to all our neighbors in person, telling them if we are every practicing at an inappropriate time of day for them, even if they just want to take a nap, call us, and we'll reschedule. I also keep the volume in our house at 85dba or less.

 

So far, the only comments we get from our neighbors is that they enjoy it, and we sound great.

 

A little civilized respect for your neighbors goes a long way.

 

I checked the noise ordinance here, and it's 55db, A weighted, slow response at my property line. The lawn mowers are louder than that, but I haven't complained.

 

The worst thing in my neighborhood is one of my neighbors is afraid of the dark and lights his yard (therefore my house) like a truck stop on the Internet. I've planted downy jasmine bushes to block it from our bedroom window, but it'll take another year for them to grow tall enough.

 

You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your neighbors.

 

Good luck.

 

Notes

[Chip McDonald]

 

FWIW, Bernie Krause has spent decades crisscrossing the globe to record the sounds of wildlife. He says it is no longer possible to find anyplace on earth where you won't hear man-made sounds, if only a plane going overhead.

 

The most surreal thing I recall from 9/11 was stepping outside my backdoor, to take a break from the surreality - only to find...Dead silence. It was so stark, I called my room mate to come outside, and said "isn't that strange?" and I just stood there. I wasn't sure he'd get my meaning, "listen... do you hear that?"

 

"It's quiet" he said.

 

A fairly cool day, no wind, no air conditioners, people inside not using leaf blowers, lawnmowers, nobody driving. And no airplanes. You don't realize that airplanes are always a low level rumble, cars a low level hum. We stood out there in the back yard, and it was dead silent. You *think* it's "silent" sometimes outside, but it's so constant that constant sub-58 db background you blend into thinking "wind sound, birds". Like walking onto the floor of an old-school Storyk-style tracking room. It was like that a bit during the lockdown; but that day was QUIET.

 

I miss movie theaters not so much because of movies, but because of the simple experience of sitting in a super low noise floor damped THX room. Hearing someone whisper 30 rows back, stir the straw in their drink. Common, mundane sounds that are normally masked.

 

 

/ There *are* outdoor places I've been to that are silent, no planes or anything near, but.... you need Very Ultra Special Super Duper Permission to be there.

[Notes_Norton]

We get that way after a hurricane. Then the emergency gas-powered generators crank up, and the silence is gone. But with the power out, I can actually see the Milky Way again.

 

Notes

[Chip McDonald]

But with the power out, I can actually see the Milky Way again.

Notes

 

I remember when the sky wasn't sodium orange.

 

I can't really see the stars from most places around town anymore.

 

I remember when you couldn't read the text in a book outside at night. You don't even need headlights to drive around at night anymore.

[Marzzz]

When I was in college (at a large Big Ten university) living in the dorm as a sophomore, during September move-in some would-be football player had a guitar and an amp set up in his dorm room and was blasting his "version" of Led Zeppelin's Heartbreaker. People were banging on his door to no avail. After about an hour of this, some guy walks up, politely knocks on the door, and football player opens the door to have a confrontation. Some guy politely asks, "I play a little too, may I see your guitar?" And football player hands it to him. He proceeds to absolutely rip the same song, including the famous solo break, finishes and hands the guitar back to the football player. We never heard another sound from his room the rest of the semester...

[Anderton]

We get that way after a hurricane. Then the emergency gas-powered generators crank up, and the silence is gone. But with the power out, I can actually see the Milky Way again.

 

Notes

 

Also, the silence after an earthquake is eerie as hell. It only lasts for a while before dogs start barking and freaking out.

 

Being in a place that gets lightning storms, we have the occasional power outage. It's only then that I remember how many things in a house make noise or hum - refrigerators, HVAC, dimmers, ceiling fans, etc.

[Nowarezman]

Down here in Austin it got to total silence during last winter's snowpocalypse, especially in the wee hours - quite magical.

 

No one down here has snow blowers. And it's one in thousands that has chains to put on tires.

 

As an example of how clueless a Texan can be when it comes to snow and ice on the road - around 1980 I moved to Denver for grad school. Had a little Corolla with no back seat but good speakers. At the first little bit of weather that put a thin layer of ice on the streets, I headed out for the grocery or someplace, missed a turn, and attempted to turn around on a residential street. The manuever was simple - turn 45 degrees left, back up going perpendicular to the road, then a sharp left and on you go. As so as I did the 45 degree turn and started backing slowly - the moment I had back tires on one side of the tiny crest in the middle of the road, and front tires on the other side, my back tires just spun on the 1/16th sheet of ice. Oh yes, not much tread - I was a grad student, right?

 

In that predicament, a shaggy young guy with a ratty car and Texas plates needing a bit of help to push - I experienced my first big taste of Colorado contempt for Texans

 

nat

[Notes_Norton]

We get that way after a hurricane. Then the emergency gas-powered generators crank up, and the silence is gone. But with the power out, I can actually see the Milky Way again.

 

Notes

 

Also, the silence after an earthquake is eerie as hell. It only lasts for a while before dogs start barking and freaking out.

 

Being in a place that gets lightning storms, we have the occasional power outage. It's only then that I remember how many things in a house make noise or hum - refrigerators, HVAC, dimmers, ceiling fans, etc.

I've never been in an earthquake that I've noticed. There was one when reported when we were driving in California, but it wasn't enough for us to notice when driving on Route 1 by the ocean.

 

In the summer, from the end of May through the end of September, we have the rainy season. From June to September, it's thunderstorms every day. They are scattered, but many more days than not we get drenched.

 

I've been in a number of hurricanes, and the power always goes out if it's a Cat 2 and sometimes a wet Cat 1.

 

The year we had Francis Jeanne and Ivan, we were out of power 10 days each. In that situation, you run the generator for an hour or two to cool the refrigerator, then turn it off for 4 or more hours. Since we depend on a well for water, when the generator is on is when we refill jugs and take showers.

 

Without all the lights, the nights are delightfully dark, and we could see the stars reflecting on the 2-mile wide lagoon just east of us.

 

It's not that I enjoy the power being out, but there are ways to look at the bright side of the situation.

 

Notes

[KenElevenShadows]

But with the power out, I can actually see the Milky Way again.

Notes

 

I remember when the sky wasn't sodium orange.

 

I can't really see the stars from most places around town anymore.

 

I remember when you couldn't read the text in a book outside at night. You don't even need headlights to drive around at night anymore.

 

Naturally, being a night photographer and all, I have to comment on this!

 

This is one of the joys that I will get when I move out to the desert. I have a house out there now. Being able to walk out to the backyard at night, look up, and see the Milky Way feels like such a privilege. It's something truly special.

 

We have become so disconnected from nature, where 80% of the world's population live in places where they cannot see the Milky Way. And it's not just us. It's animals. It doesn't take a brainiac to figure out how it screws with sleep patterns of animals or disturb their natural cycles or any of that.

[Notes_Norton]

We have neighbors across the street who are obviously afraid of the dark. Their lights shine into our house at night, bright enough so we can make hand-shadow puppets on the opposite wall. I tried talking to them, but they parroted, "Thieves don't like lights."

 

So we have light trespassing into our house. The neighbors are not trying to be mean, they just bought the disproven theory that lights deter burglars. And the fact that they use spotlights pointed away from their house means a thief can stand under the light by the wall and not be seen. They just don't get it.

 

So I planted some Downy Jasmine plants, by next summer they should be tall enough.

 

We live without Air Conditioning for a variety of reasons. One of which is climate change.

 

AC units create a feedback loop. We AC our houses to keep cool. On the other hand, the energy needed to run the AC units add CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. If that weren't bad enough, the AC unit creates a heat island near the condenser. I read that 40% of the electricity used in the USA is for air conditioners, that's a lot of heat added to the atmosphere. So we need to crank up the AC units even higher to cool our homes. That creates even more heat in the environment, so the AC has to work harder, which creates more heat, so they have to be cranked up higher, which creates more heat, so we crank it up, and it works even harder making it even hotter outside, which means we need to crank it up again, ad infinitum.

 

Our neighbor said we can always get blackout shades, but it's summer, and without an AC running 24/7, we need to have the windows opened.

 

So our only defense was to plant the Downy Jasmines. I couldn't find big ones, so I got small ones. They are already about 3 feet tall, but need to be at least 6 feet to block out the light. The jasmines are not native to Florida, but well adapted. They grow up to 8 feet tall, and once established need zero care. My yard is xeriscaped, nothing needs additional fertilizer or watering once they are established. Most of the plants are natives with a few well established, non-invasive exotics.

 

I planted shade trees around my house, so that they shade the yard, but not directly over the roof. I painted my roof bright white. When it's 95 degrees out, it's still 79 or 80 inside the house without AC. This seems to me a better way to keep cool without adding to the heating problem.

 

But that's just me. I'm obviously in the extreme minority.

 

You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your neighbors.

 

Notes